Agency offers fake restaurant reviews

MOSCOW: A Russian marketing agency has offered to help restaurants in cities hosting the World Cup use fake reviews to bump up ratings on TripAdvisor.

Bacon Agency says it can circumvent review site TripAdvisor’s algorithm for detecting fraudulent posts and publish reviews in foreign languages ahead of an influx of fans from abroad.

“What can you do if no Serbs and no Swedes have ever been to your venue and left a review?” Bacon Agency asks, in a brochure received by a restaurant in Yekaterinburg, which hosts Egypt and Uruguay in their first round matches. “You write it yourself!” it says. For 35,000 rubles (RM2,300), the firm promises a spot in the site’s top 10 list.

“We are offering to help tourists find you, and to leave their money specifically with you,” it writes.

TripAdvisor responded by saying: “We oppose any attempt to manipulate a business ranking.

“Our dedicated investigations team is proactive and extremely effective at catching those trying to solicit fake reviews for money.”

Fake reviews are widespread, but it is unusual for a company involved in the practice to discuss it so openly, or to link it explicitly to a sports event.

The football World Cup has created lucrative opportunities for businesses in the 12 host cities hoping to benefit from well-to-do foreign fans at a time when Russians are feeling the pinch from a fragile economy and Western sanctions.

Contacted by Reuters, Bacon Agency confirmed it had offered the service, but said it only wanted to act as the middleman between restaurants and freelancers posting fake reviews.

“We understand that all this is illegal in the sense that TripAdvisor is against it,” said its owner Roman Baldanov.

“We were just testing this niche, because we see high demand. It’s not because we’re bad guys who came in and said, look, you’ve got to start swindling.

“All restaurants know that reviews are ordered, and many use this service.”

He said nobody had yet taken up his offer. “The response we got was: thanks, but we are already doing this ourselves.” – Reuters