ReviewMeta Report vs Fakespot Report: Confused by wild variation

[Zarplod 0]

Hello,

I’ve recently started using your app on Amazon and I have a question. Prior to using your app I was using Fakespot which I have continued to use in addition to yours. Tonight I looked up items that I knew would probably have questionable reviews (e.g. cheap Chinese products that have mainly all five star reviews). I did this with four different items and each time FakeSpot came up with the expected rating of F, meaning that fewer than 10% of the reviews seemed reliable. However, your app, on all four of the items that I looked at, did not change the numeric rating at all and said that it deemed all of the reviews legitimate. Even if the algorithms and metrics that you use are vastly different from that of Fakespot I would imagine there to be some correlation in results, however in these four cases I found no correlation whatsoever. As an example here is one products that comes up with an F rating on Fakespot and a perfectly clean rating on ReviewMeta. See if you could take a look at this and explain to me why. Example: “USB Hub，atolla USB 3.0 Hub with 3 USB 3.0 Ports and SD/Micro SD Card Reader, Ultra Slim USB Splitter with Individual Power Switches and LEDs” made by Atolla.

Thanks,

Mike
 

Edited September 25, 2019 by Tommy
Clarifying title (see edit history)

[ReviewMeta 35]

Hey Mike-

It's always important to remember that both Fakespot and ReviewMeta are estimates - nobody can actually tell which reviews are fake and real as a matter of fact, although Fakespot isn't as upfront about this fact.  Fakespot also doesn't share details about their analysis, so it's impossible to check their work or really know how their secret magic formula is working.

I've seen Fakespot going around saying that 30% of reviews on Amazon are fake.  We think this is way overblown, and put that number closer to 7-9%.  Amazon itself claims less than 1%.  So our understanding is that Fakespot is much more aggressive and is likely displaying a lot of false positives.

Another thing to remember is that just because a product has fake reviews does not mean that it's a bad product.  A Fakespot F or a ReviewMeta Fail doesn't necessarily mean the product is fake, defective or faulty.  Always go with your gut and always return products on Amazon if you feel you've been deceived.

Here's something we wrote about this topic a few years back and a good discussion in the comments: https://reviewmeta.com/blog/fakespot-vs-reviewmeta-for-analyzing-reviews/