HOW TO TAKE DOWN BLACK HAT COMPETITORS With Fake Verified Reviews, Merged ASINs, Fake Unverified Reviews By a White Hat Seller Trying to Survive Table 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. of Contents Spotting Fake Verified Reviews……………………….Page 2 Spotting Fake Non-verified Reviews………………….Page 3 Spotting Sock Puppet Amazon Account……………...Page 5 Spotting Merge Listing………………………………….Page 7 How to Report Black Hat Competitors to Amazon…..Page 10 Page 1 of Awesomeness 1. SPOTTING FAKE VERIFIED REVIEWS Things to watch out for: 1. All (or a long list of early) reviews seem to be detailed reviews. 2. Unusual amount of reviews have pics or videos attached in a row. Normal ratio of reviewers attaching images or videos with their review is under 3%. 3. After clicking on the reviewer profile they have only left 1 or 2 reviews in their lifetime. This would be a sock puppet account - more on this below in Section 3. 4. Look for obvious things like excessive amount of guys reviewing women’s products. BLACK HAT EXAMPLE: Page 2 of Awesomeness 2. SPOTTING FAKE NON-VERIFIED REVIEWS Things to watch out for: 1. Non-verified reviews should be less than 10% of overall review count. 2. They should never appear in a row/sequence like somebody just ordered 10-20 unverified reviews for themselves. BLACK HAT EXAMPLE: Page 3 of Awesomeness WHITE HAT EXAMPLE: Page 4 of Awesomeness 3. SPOTTING SOCK PUPPET AMAZON ACCOUNT Attributes of a Sock Puppet Reviewer: Below are some common themes we detected. Some actual users can fall into this but based on detailed research on black hat competitors, these type of reviewer profile 95% of the time are fake sock puppet accounts. Please click on the reviewer name to open their reviewer profile. Then check for below: - - Posted reviews anywhere from 1-10 times. Some fake profiles can even leave up to 50-100 reviews. Posted reviews only in the last couple months. Review history does not span years like most. Seems to review only private label brands Excessive amounts of helpful votes. For e.g 95%+ of the real users has less “helpful votes” than they give reviews. In these profiles you will see helpful votes exceeding number of reviews consistently. As there are many services are out who sell services to vote reviews helpful. These sock puppets accounts are used to leave reviews and upvote Q&A and reviews. Multiple reviewer profiles have a pattern of leaving review for different products from the same seller. BLACK HAT REVIEWER PROFILE: Posted reviews on completely different products from the same seller. There were several shared between these products. Obviously, this seller bought all of their “fake verified reviews” for their different products from one company: Page 5 of Awesomeness BLACK HAT REVIEWER PROFILE: Unusual amount of high helpful votes compared to reviews. For a real customer, normally the helpful votes are way less than the actual reviews. Rarely over their actual number of reviews. Page 6 of Awesomeness 4. SPOTTING MERGE LISTING FOR REVIEWS Attributes to spot merged listings: 1. Check images in reviews to see if they match the product they are selling. BLACK HAT LISTING MERGE EXAMPLE 1: Product: Images in Reviews: Seller recycled a mannequin listing to sell butt lifting cream. Page 7 of Awesomeness BLACK HAT LISTING MERGE EXAMPLE 2: Product: Reviews: SORT BY MOST RECENT AND GO TO THE LAST PAGE OF REVIEWS Seller is selling blackhead remover with food container listings. Page 8 of Awesomeness BLACK HAT LISTING MERGE EXAMPLE 3: The Q&A’s show that the product was earlier used to sell Vitamin C power and now it has been recycled for Jade Rollers. Page 9 of Awesomeness 5. H OW TO REPORT There are two ways to report. Report the same issue using all three methods. Create separate cases for separate issues. Write the content according to the issues. Be detailed in explaining why you suspect the listings are merged or reviews or reviewers are fake. Do not report more than 5 (fake verified/unverified) reviews 5.1 Direct mail to Seller Performance Team 5.1.1. Find as many as violation in the listing 5.1.2. Separate mail for each issue to seller-performance@amazon.com 5.1.3. In case of reporting fake verified or fake unverified reviews, only report 5 reviews at a time with review links and reviewer profile with an explanation of why these reviews and sock puppet accounts are fake. 5.1.4. Use email subject “Review Manipulation / ASIN XXXXX / SELLER XXXX” 5.2 Reporting from Seller Central 5.2.1 Contact US 5.2.2 Selling on Amazon Page 10 of Awesomeness 5.2.3 Other Issues 5.2.4 Report a Violation Page 11 of Awesomeness Page 12 of Awesomeness
