When Can You Trust Product Reviews?
When you’re looking for information about a product or service, you often turn to review sites to see what others have to say. But you might not realize that many of these sites are actually paid advertising.
That’s right, companies will often pay review sites to post positive reviews about their products or services. And while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this, it’s important to be aware of it so you can take it into consideration when you’re reading the reviews.
Of course, not all review sites are paid advertising. But many of them are, so it’s always a good idea to do a little research to see if a particular site might be biased.
So, how can you tell if a review site is paid advertising? Here are some things to look for:
- The site features a lot of ads, and the reviews are interspersed with them
- The site has a “sponsored” or “featured” section
- The site has a lot of reviews for one particular product or service
- The reviews on the site are all positive
- The customer reviews for rated products are all 5 stars. (Let’s be honest, consumer’s are more driven to review a product when they are unhappy. All 5 stars? – they probably paid for them. We’re proud of our 3.8 star rating. It represents months, and even years of tweaking a product we believe in. We read those reviews and act. So, our rating is a badge of honor that represents a two-way communication with our loyal customers. We listen and we deliver. We’ve spent many years fine tuning our size guide for example, as a direct response from our customers. We hope they engage us, so that we can be better.)
- Some Amazon affiliates often publish what appears to be reviews on URLs that are product specific like “BestBunionCorrectors.com”. That’s a dead giveaway everytime.
- Some editors from sites that you think can be trusted, are just throwing the top Amazon search results onto a page and attaching a “7 Best…” title as click bait.
If you’re looking for unbiased reviews, you might want to check out sites like Consumer Reports, the Better Business Bureau, or LifeSavy. These sites don’t allow companies to pay for reviews, so you can be sure that the information you’re getting is unbiased.
Of course, even unbiased review sites might not be 100% accurate. So it’s always a good idea to take everything you read with a grain of salt. There are some great review sites out there that can be trusted. But there are also many that are nothing more than paid advertising. The key is to be aware of the potential biases and to make sure you’re getting information from a reliable source.
Do Your Homework
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that review sites are often paid advertising. But that doesn’t mean that they’re always accurate. So be sure to do your own research before you make any decisions.
As a side note, we’d like to thank Lifesavy.com for publishing an unbiased (and unbeknown to us!) a review of the Best Bunion Correctors – and rated us the TOP CHOICE! We are extremely humbled. And we welcome you to visit our Amazon page below or our website reviews page to learn more about what others are saying about Bunion Bootie.
Remember, we take care of our customers. Think you need to try a larger size? Email us! We’ll send you a free one to try, yours to keep. Think it’s too tight? Again, we’ll send you a larger size, no questions asked! Unhappy for any reason – you guessed it, email us – we’ll refund you. No. Questions. Asked. Being in contact with our customers is the best way to get honest raw feedback. 🙂