In an August ruling, the Federal Trade Commission banned corporations from writing and buying their very own reviews. Now it’s claimed that a customer review site, Sitejabber, posted “misleading” rankings and reviews on behalf of the 130,000 businesses on its platform. The FTCs proposed order would stop Sitejabber from “misrepresenting” customer rankings and reviews “in the future.”
The FTC’s criticism claims that Sitejabber collected reviews at the purpose of sale or before customers received or experienced a services or products. In one example, customers were asked to rate their entire shopping experience out of 5 stars and to quickly write something immediately after trying out.
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These quick rankings and reviews, or quick feedback survey results, turn into a part of a site’s profile on Sitejabber. According to the FTC, this may lead people to imagine that previous customers have rated an organization’s services or products highly, when in reality they were only rating the shopping experience.
“Present [Instant Feedback Survey] Results, as post-transaction reviews and rankings can mislead consumers into believing that an organization’s high variety of reviews and high rating mean that 1000’s of shoppers have had positive experiences with the corporate’s services or products, although the rankings and reviews displayed actually only reflected the rankings of shoppers. “Experiences Shopping on the Company’s Websites,” reads page 4 of the FTC criticism.
How to avoid FTC scrutiny in your website reviews
Companies can avoid FTC scrutiny by ensuring that their rankings and reviews within the quick feedback survey are usually not linked to their product rankings and reviews – so customers know exactly what’s being reviewed.
This is considered one of the FTCs initial enforcement actions under his latest rule.
“Together with ours Fake reviews and testimonials rule“Cases like this demonstrate that we will act to stop all forms of deception in the review ecosystem,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection.
The FTC’s previous rule on fake reviews and testimonials prevents corporations from buying or selling fake reviews, including AI-generated reviews.
Related: According to the FTC, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp all engage in “pervasive surveillance” to make billions
