Amazon have apparently filed a lawsuit against websites which they assert offer a service to provide reviews for products. The sites named in the lawsuit are buyazonreviews.com, buyamazonreviews.com, bayreviews.net and buyreviewsnow.com.
There appears little doubt that the reviews are less than genuine, one of the sites states in their FAQ “You can either provide your own reviews or we can write them for you. We have in house writers who are skilled at writing custom reviews based on your specifications”. If you’re writing the reviews for your own products for others to post that can hardly be considered a genuine review.
Amazon claim that fake reviews tarnish their reputation as well as asserting that some of the sites have infringed their IP using Amazon’s logo etc.
This will be an interesting case with ramifications for all other review sites. More importantly it’s firing a shot across the bows of all sites which offer to manufacture reviews for products under any circumstances, paid or otherwise (often review are in exchange for a free product sample).
Reviews do have value, products with positive reviews receive better placement in Amazon searches, plus Google loves reviews and indexes them in search engine results.
NB The review in the image above is (as far as we know) genuine, although we still find it and many other reviews for that product highly amusing!
