According to TripAdvisor’s biennial “Review Transparency Report,” 4.4% of all reviews posted on TripAdvisor in 2022 were fake reviews.
Increase in fake reviews in recent years
In this year’s survey, 4.4% of all reviews were fake, compared to 2.1% in the 2018 survey and 3.6% in the 2020 survey, indicating that the number of fake reviews is increasing. According to the 2020 study, 8.6% of all reviews were rejected or removed if they violated the guidelines, including inappropriate language. This means that about 1 out of every 10 times we try to submit a post to TripAdvisor, it will be rejected or removed from the site due to some sort of rule violation.
With 72% of fake reviews in 2022 being dismissed or deleted before publication, our exposure to such false information may be less than with social networking sites. However, if the development of generative AI and natural language processing leads to the use of large-scale learned language models for review sites, it is possible that fake reviews will be spread in natural sentences that neither the sites nor we can distinguish from each other.
In response to this situation, a coalition of retail, consumer goods, travel, and other companies has formed an effort to combat fake reviews in order to protect consumers (See also: Tech giants vs. fake reviews. Can the World’s First Coalition Ensure Consumer Confidence?)
Source: Tripadvisor’s Review Transparency Report reveals just 4.4% of listings found to be fake