I often see reviews written by business owners and their associates to promote business. Some reviews are rigged and using "science". Is there anything we can trust any more???

Me. I am, as you might expect, a Top Contributor at Trip Advisor with about 130 reviews. They are all credible. I have 600 reviews at Barnes & Noble and over 100 at Amazon. Lots of people just like me are trying to share their thoughts. The ones with a long track record are usually the ones more credible.

Oh my Lucky I have to go and find you.. I have to look for you there when you are not around here.. That's good to know..

Companies tend to pay $2 per positive review on Trip Advisor which means that the people who have like 2,000 reviews under their belt are probably freelance marketing people.

Oh my Lucky I have to go and find you.. I have to look for you there when you are not around here.. That's good to know..

You are going to look for all the reviews signed "Lucky"?

Companies tend to pay $2 per positive review on Trip Advisor which means that the people who have like 2,000 reviews under their belt are probably freelance marketing people.

This makes complete sense. (Regrettably!)

As a reviewer, how do you get entry to this game? Lots of unpaid reviews first? How do reviewer and reviewee first make contact with each other?

I do general marketing for a lot of companies. Every so often one of them will as part of the general marketing campaign ask me to do reviews on Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc...

I have about a hundred dummy email addreses I can use to make it happen.

I am a legitimate reveiwer on many sites such as Tripadvisor. I have had negative reviews pulled for no reason on Tripadvisor. As soon as that happens my trust in the site goes down the terlet and I use the site as a travel/buying tool rather than a trusted review site while taking any reviews on these sites with a big lump of salt.

I have friends in marketing who have told me the same thing as BiBottomBoy posted above.... So I tend to trust peer driven sites(even though there are shills in those as well-but they get sniffed out quickly) rather than sites which are strictly about reviews.

You should also realize that TripAdvisor is owned by a HUGE travel company.

You could do it "for fun". Once on a cruise with a "well known" escort, I told our dinner table companions that we were "secret reviewers" but could not reveal whether we were reviewing the ship, its' on shore offerings or just what. My "companion" nearly choked when I made this announcement but recovered enough by taking a sip of wine and "re-joining' the conversation.

One person's trash is another's treasure and reviews of places, people and things tend to be somewhat the same.

You pay your money and you take your chances.

Best regards,

RA1

trip advisor is filled with fakery. loads of hotel submitted reviews

whats worse is reading rambling opinions from folks who have no clue what makes a good hotel stay

Trip Advisor is totally skewed to ignore fake positive reviews because it drives revenue.