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photo: GETTY IMAGES (ONLINE ILLUSTRATION)
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Best Article Ever!
BY GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and JOSEPH DE AVILA
The Web can be a mean-spirited place. But when consumers write online reviews, they tend to be exceedingly polite: The average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five. People like Jonas Luster are trying to introduce a little negativity. A private chef, Mr. Luster recently called on fellow San Francisco-area diners to “quit with the nicey-nicey,” in a blog post titled “In Defense of Negative Reviews.” His own average rating on restaurant-review sites is 3.6. “I am a meanie,” says Mr. Luster. “My pet peeve is menus that say something is cooked ‘to perfection.’ Perfection is a state you never attain.” HUMAN NATURE Many companies have noticed serious grade inflation. Google’s YouTube says the videos on its site average 4.6 stars, because viewers use five-star ratings to “give props” to video makers. Buzzillions.com, which compiles reviews from 3,000 sites, has tracked millions of reviews and has noticed particular exuberance for products such as printer paper (average: 4.4 stars), boots (4.4) and dog food (4.7). If the rest of the Internet is filled with nasty celebrity blogs and email flame wars, what makes product review sites so lovey-dovey? The largest contributor may be human nature. Marketing research firm Keller Fay Group surveys 100 consumers each week to ask them about what products they mentioned to friends in conversation. “There is an urban myth that people are far more likely to express negatives than positives,” says Ed Keller, the company’s CEO. But on average, he finds that 65% of the word-of-mouth reviews are positive. That’s why Amazon.com reviewer Marc Schenker in Vancouver has become a Web-ratings vigilante. For the past several years, he has left nothing but one-star reviews for products. The vast majority of reviewers on Amazon “are a bunch of brown-nosing cheerleaders,” says Mr. Schenker. “In an online store selling millions of items, there are bound to be many, many awful ones,” he says. Mr. Schenker suspects that Amazon intentionally deletes negative reviews so it can sell more products. It did kick him off the site last year and, he says, won’t even let him make purchases. The company wouldn’t comment on his removal, but a letter he says he received from Amazon describes his posts as “rude, harassing and abusive.” POSITIVITY PROBLEM Some suspect companies goose their ratings. This summer TripAdvisor.com, which averages just above a four, warned that some of its hotel reviews may have been written by hotel managers. Other sites admit they have a positivity problem and are taking novel steps to curb the enthusiasm. One way is to redefine average. Reviews of eBay’s millions of merchants were so positive that eBay made 4.3 out of five stars its minimum service standard. Another site, Goodrec, decided to ditch the five-star rating system altogether, replacing it with a thumbs-up and thumbs-down system. Amazon now highlights “the most helpful critical review” at the top of its review pages. Jeremy Stoppelman, chief executive of Yelp.com, which posts reviews of local businesses in cities around the country, bragged in September that his site’s reviews were more diverse. The average review on Yelp is 3.8. Many assume online reviews are “only rants or raves, resulting in consumer Web sites composed solely of ratings on the extremes,” he blogged. “A broader range of opinions can give consumers a more complete view of a business,” he says.
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