How to spot a fake restaurant or hotel review

Yelp and other similar similar review sites are enormously popular with people looking to venture into the unknown. And most people are aware that some reviews are planted or, even worse, created by extortion. So how do we screen reviews to find out what genuine consumers really think? NPR’s The Salt tackled the issue in their article “Five Ways to Spot a Fake Online Review, Restaurant or Otherwise. ” You should read the article to find out, among other things, why Expedia reviews are better than Trip Advisor, but here are the five tips that a recent study suggests should give you the real scoop:

1. Compare reviews not only within a site, but across different websites.
2. Reviews by people who are verified by the site are more trustworthy than reviews by anonymous reviewers – especially when it comes to negative reviews.
3. Read reviews less for whether they give a hotel or a restaurant one star or five stars, but more for the specific information they give about the experience.
4. Reviews are very useful for information that experts or merchants might not think to provide – how late a swimming pool stays open could be useful if you are traveling with a family.
5. Focus on aggregates, not outliers. You can’t trust a handful of bad reviews or glowing reviews, but trends are much harder to fake.