New Analysis Proves How The App Store And Play Store Continuously Fail At Filtering Fake Reviews

There are two main places that mobile users turn to when they’re in search of downloading an app of their preference.

And in case you haven’t guessed by now, it’s Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. But one issue that both these places have failed to overcome is linked to fake reviews.

It’s a constant struggle and people are failing at filtering those suspicious reviews out of their apps, as recently found by an analysis conducted by Which?

It made use of a special model that classified all sorts of suspicious review behavior on those apps and they found nearly 25% of the top 100 applications on Google Play have questionable reviews. As far as the App Store is concerned, the figure here was said to be 17%.

The trend has been spiraling upward for a number of years and various products and companies are really struggling. So if you do see a business doing well based on fake reviews across the stores, don’t be surprised, as this review confirms.

A large-scale analysis of such reviews on the respective platforms showed how people were paying hundreds of dollars to attain five-star reviews. And when you look at such data online, you’ll see a figure that’s close to 18,000.

This is massive and by benchmarking such apps, it’s a clear strategy to differentiate this from other trusted apps that arise in similar categories. After that, the behavior linked to certain reviewers was compared to attain a model that would be able to calculate the degree of suspicious activity arising.

Clearly, there were massive differences between both patterns of reviews.

With five stars, so many apps were making use of paid reviews and these had a much bigger proportion linked to five-star reviews. For instance, dating apps had massively positive reviews that comprised nearly 60%.

Experts from this study also made people aware of how they can note down suspicious activity in the form of review manipulation with ease. They’re usually comprised of bulk uploads. Yes, so many clusters of highly rated reviews arise over a span of just four to five days.

Then you’ll notice a break, right before another huge spike comes into play. Again, these were apps that were not too well known. They contrasted so much different when compared to the apps with fake reviews.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World