Credits: The Telegraph Travel By: Oliver Smith
‘New evidence of hoteliers attempting to manipulate their ratings has increased the pressure on TripAdvisor to improve its screening procedures.’
‘Pressure is growing on TripAdvisor, the travel review website, to improve its screening procedures following the emergence of new evidence of hoteliers attempting to manipulate their ratings and of fake reviews going up unnoticed.
A restaurant that is not even open is currently ranked 17th best in London, and two Telegraph Travel readers have been offered £180 to delete a negative view they posted of a hotel in Gloucestershire.’
‘Such case studies blow apart TripAdvisor’s claims about sophisticated filtering systems, and illustrate how unreliable its reviews are,” said Chris Emmins, founder of KwikChex, which – since 2010 – has been campaigning for TripAdvisor to accept only reviews from authenticated patrons rather than anonymous users.’
‘Mr Emmins said the ease with which Kwikchex had manipulated the site exposed “the ridiculous nature of [TripAdvisor’s] ‘Popularity Index’ and the rankings system that is so important to businesses.”
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