Consumers today have more power and variety when it comes to choosing products or service providers that suit their needs. With the rise of social media, cell phones, apps, Internet search and review engines, and other modern advancements, we now have access to all the benchmark information we need to choose one business over another and rate a business. . In the case of consumers, using reviews to make decisions is a great advantage that many companies are willing to use to their advantage. After a transaction, the emails ask you to rate a business right away. Unfortunately, with the creation of information we also have disinformation. As markets become more crowded and competitive, some questionable businesses resort to using less trustworthy review sites or decide to spread misinformation themselves, all in an attempt to win over unsuspecting customers. So what can you do about it? Here are some tips on how to tell if you can trust a company’s ratings.

1. Do they have many qualifications?

A company with a great reputation that provides valuable service with a great customer experience should have many four or five star ratings and a high volume of reviews and testimonials. When your most trusted review sites show numerous positive ratings even with many reviews, it’s a good sign that the reviews are real and accurately reflect customer experiences.

2. Are the reviews overwhelmingly positive?

Often when a questionable company is trying to grow their business, they will hire writers to post overly positive comments or reviews on search sites and on the website. If the comments you are reading do not have an ounce of objectivity, they may be false.

3. Are there only a few of them?

If you only see 1 or 2 positive comments about a business that has been around for a while, chances are they will delete all the negative comments in what is known as “cherry picking”. Unless the business is a startup and just getting off the ground, take a closer look and see when the business was established and how many reviews it has.

4. Do the reviews read like an infomercial?

If the reviews found for the company in question are few and read as if the head of the marketing department had written them, they probably did. It is becoming more and more common for companies themselves to pass themselves off as customers praising the company. Too often, however, the people who write the fake reviews don’t take enough time to walk away from their writing and add too many product descriptions and use verbiage taken directly from the marketing material. If it looks cut and pasted from a brochure, it’s probably a fake review.

5. Does the company respond to negative reviews?

You see it more often these days, a customer will post their negative testimonial and complain on a popular review site. As you read the follow-up comments, you’ll notice that the company itself read the review and personally apologized and offered to fix the problem. Real reviews are used to improve a business and develop customer relationships. If you see the company respond and adjust their customer satisfaction skills, you have a real review.

With these tips, you can ensure that you spend your time considering only information that comes from real and accurate informative reviews.