Cyber Monday is finally here. There’s nothing better than getting a great deal while still in your pajamas. Before placing an order, do you ever check the reviews prior to purchasing an item? If you do, you’re not alone, but do you actually believe what you read? If you believe everything you read online about an item, you might want to reconsider. A new study done by bestseocompanies.com discovered the truth about online reviews.
The company found that of the 2.7 million reviews online analyzed, 39 percent of them were unreliable. To break it down further, 24 percent of all online products analyzed had more than 50 percent of unreliable reviews.
The survey showed that people often do read reviews prior to purchasing; however, specific categories are researched more often than others. Seventy-one percent of people read reviews before making an appliance purchase. Following appliances, 67.6 percent of people read reviews of electronics before purchasing. Rounding out the top five are laptops and computers ( 64.2 percent ), restaurants (62.3 percent) and cellphones and accessories (53.1 percent.)
Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed wrote a review for a product or service within the past year. Fifty-two percent of respondents are likely to read reviews on Amazon, and 30 percent are likely to read Google reviews. Seventy percent of people surveyed said that they would pay more for products or items with higher reviews.
The study shed light on the fact that some of these reviews were explicitly requested. Fifteen percent of all respondents said that they had been asked to write a review for items they did not use nor purchased.
Although other categories had higher percentages, electronics (195k), home decor (183k) and apparel (165k) had the highest volume of fake reviews. Topping the list of fake reviews was apparel with a whopping 46.2 percent of reviews. Shortly behind it comes the finding that 45.6 percent of home decor reviews were fake. Garden and outdoors raked in 42.1 percent of fake reviews. Coming in fourth place was that stat that 42 percent of all electronics reviews were faked. Rounding out the top five categories is automotive and industrial, with 39.1 percent fake reviews.
