Things to Check Before Buying: A Cheat List

1. Check the Date of Reviews

  1. Click on 5-star on the left side of the comments section to sort all the five-star reviews together.
  2. On the page that appears, scroll down to find the drop-down menu under SORT BY and change it to Top Reviews.
  3. Now you can scroll through the comments to check if all the five-star reviews are appearing on similar dates.

2. Read Three-Star Reviews for Grounded Product Opinions

One can often get confused while scrolling through the comments section of products. Fake reviews with five stars praise the products to the heavens while reviews below two stars can be overwhelmingly negative. While illegitimate positive reviews are bad, reviews that are profusely negative are as useless when making a purchase decision. The best method to gauge a realistic understanding of the product is to look at the three-star reviews. Three stars reviews tend to be more grounded, detail-oriented, and less emotionally charged. They tend to be the best when judging the value of a product. 2. Click on 3-star on the left side of the comments section to sort and display all the three-star reviews.

3. Read Customers Question & Answers Section

  1. Scroll down a product page to find the Customer questions & answers. It can be found above Customer reviews section
  2. In the text box below, type in keywords like quality. For example, to look for previously asked questions and their answers.
  3. You can also pose new questions if you find the existing questions and answers inadequate. Click on Post your question button below the Q&A section to ask a new question. Do note that the button only appears when you have already entered text in the Q&A text box. Note: Your questions may take time to get answered or may not be answered at all. It also depends on whether you have the time to wait for answers before buying a product. The product can also go out of stock if it is in high demand or if it is a rare product.

4. Check Reviewers’ Profiles

  1. Scroll down to the comments section and click on the customer name provided on top of any review to get into the reviewer’s profile.
  2. You will be able to see the name and statistics of the reviewer on the new page that appears. The total number of reviews that have been left will also be displayed at top of the page.
  3. Scroll down the page to look at the previous reviews made by the reviewer. The existence of only positive comments with five-star reviews could mean that the reviews are fake. Also, look at the actual reviews and see if they are just generic praise. The tiles are also indicative of the nature of the review. All the reviews having titles like “Great Product!” or “Liked it” may indicate a scam profile.

5. Install Fakespot Browser Extension

  1. Click on Add to Chrome button on the Fakespot website. You will be redirected to your browser’s respective extension store after clicking on it.
  2. Click on Add to Chrome on the Chrome Webstore page that appears. (the extension store page depends on the browser of your choice.)
  3. On the product page, you will notice that Fakespot has already analyzed the reviews and is displaying statistics based on them.
  4. Click on Analyze reviews and scroll down to the bottom of the new page to see an overview of the results generated by Fakespot. In the overview, you will see the overall opinion of reviewers on the product. It will display various statistics like the number of irrelevant reviews, the existence of deceptive reviews, and the overall content quality of the reviews. It also shows what the AI thinks is the most positive and the least authentic review (this feature is in beta, so results may not be accurate).