We had a very interesting email that came in today.
“Hello MyBuzz Technologies Ltd,are u interested in buy some Appstore / Google Play ratings and reviews? Report shows that reviews are the most significant factors when users search on app store. This means that if you get more positive reviews , the ranking of your app will greatly be improved.
We provide Real People Reviews with the price the following :
Appstore: 100 installs + 100 reviews + 100 ratings =$29
Google Play: 100 installs + 30 reviews + 30 ratings=$39
Appstore Plus: 1,000 installs + 1,000 reviews + 1,000 ratings=$199
You can contact us for more details or just make an order at ********”
We won’t name and shame the company.
But, it highlights a very serious problem with the internet – Fake News & Fake Reviews! (And the poor standard of grammar in emails! – Ed)
We only ever post real reviews!
Before we go into any detail on how to spot a fake review, we want to make it clear that we never have and never will post our own reviews or pay a company or any single person to write a review for us.
All the ratings and reviews of My Shift Planner on both the App Store and Google Play Store are 100% genuine from our users.
Apart from the fact that we are morally opposed to any kind of fakery, we have neither the time nor the energy to make up so many user accounts to post reviews like that!
But, it’s obvious that plenty of app companies have no such ethical squeamishness.
We’ve long known that some of the apps on the app store employ fake review companies. And all kind of other tactics to fool users into downloading inferior products.
Which makes it harder for the companies like us who refuse to do it. How do users know who to trust? How can you trust that the reviews you are reading are real?
Tips for spotting a fake app review
- Check other reviews from particular reviewer to spot a possible pattern.
- Some fake reviews make no sense. This is because they have been copied and pasted blindly.
- Look at the number of words written. If all the reviews have very few words, like “nice app!”, “Best game!” etc. And none of the reviews go into detail of why the app is useful, or how they’ve used it, it’s likely to be fake.
- Is the review stuffed with keywords? This is very easy to detect. You will be able to see that the sentence structure of the review is a mess, because of keyword spamming.
- Spelling mistakes are very common attribute to fake reviews.
- Look at the bad reviews. Do they make sense? Did the person reviewing really have a bad experience, or did they just jump straight to the keyboard.
- Check for replies. We try to reply to reviews. Especially when we’ve seen that someone has had a problem with the app. A complete lack of any replies is suspicious.
No one likes a faker!
Always have a good look at any reviews online for these criteria. Apple and Google take a dim view of apps that employ the fake reviews. Companies that send out emails like the one we received are breaking the rules of the app stores.
Here’s to hoping Apple and Google do more to clamp down on the fakers and promote the honest guys out there.
Review My Shift Planner
Want to leave us a review? We always welcome honest open feedback about My Shift Planner. To review the app:-
- Tap on the menu icon in the top right of the calendar screen
- Tap on “Rate Our App!”
- Follow the instructions to leave a rating and review.
Or, if you want to talk to us directly about My Shift Planner, drop us an email at support@myshiftplanner.com
