Online Search powered by the Voice of the People
Online reviews and information about products, businesses, and services strongly influence the purchasing behavior of customers. According to Klarna’s Global Shopping Pulse Report, 83% of shoppers research products online before visiting a store, and 72% occasionally use their smartphones for in-store research. However, a significant amount of this information is false and misleading. It’s estimated that 30-40% of online reviews are fake or manipulated, depending on the platform and industry. This number varies widely based on the type of product or service being reviewed. “E-commerce platforms like Amazon are known to have a high percentage of fake reviews, particularly in competitive categories like electronics and health supplements. A 2024 Fakespot study suggests that up to 43% of Amazon reviews are not authentic. In the UK, a travel and hospitality industry study by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that up to 50% of reviews on some platforms are fake or misleading. Reviews of restaurants and local businesses on Google Business and Yelp often show signs of being manipulated by businesses themselves or competitors.” In 2021, a study of online customer reviews in the European Union found that at least 55% of online businesses violated the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which required truthful information to be provided to customers to allow them to make an informed decision.
The problem of fake and manipulated information cannot be solved with the existing search and e-commerce technology because of the following reasons…
- There is no centralized repository for storing customer reviews. A typical customer purchases goods and services from multiple vendors. If the vendor collects the customers’ feedback, the review is stored in their database only and inaccessible to the outside world. Thus, customer reviews are scattered among multiple vendors and service providers.
- Reviews of products, businesses, and services are captured without validating user identity. Most vendors and service providers do not require users to identify themselves before accepting their review. As a consequence, customers use multiple aliases when submitting their feedback.
- Businesses and service providers don’t have the means to allow customers to save their transaction records anonymously into an account in an online database. The customer transaction record (CTR) is a window to a customer’s taste, preferences, and well-being. When a customer purchases the same goods or services repeatedly (in the presence of competing alternatives), he/she implicitly endorses the good or service. Alternatively, when the customer switches from one product or service provider to another, he/she rejects the good or service. Since there is currently no record of all customer transactions stored in a centralized database, a very valuable source of truthful information is wasted.
How Search Engines Build their Index
Search engines build their index through a multi-step process that involves crawling, processing, and organizing web content. During crawling, search engines use automated bots to systematically browse the web and discover new or updated web pages. Once a page is crawled, the search engine analyzes the web pages to understand the meaning, structure, and context of the crawled information. In the next step, the engine indexes all the content it discovered and processed. Then, they use ranking algorithms that consider factors like content quality, user engagement, backlinks, and freshness to determine how authoritative and relevant a page is for specific queries. When a user performs a search query, the search engine retrieves the most relevant entries from its index, ranks them based on algorithms, and presents them in the form of search engine results pages (SERPs).
Building a Search Index from Online Reviews and Customer Transaction Records
It is also possible to build a search index using anonymous reviews and customer transaction records. In our previous blogs, “Token-based Loyalty Program” and “Customer Owned Transaction Records,” we described the technology allowing customers to save their transaction records anonymously in a centralized repository on the cloud. The centralized repository of reviews and transaction records can become an index for a very efficient search engine. A customer does not purchase goods from a single vendor and also does not submit only one feedback in its lifetime. A customer purchases the same goods from multiple vendors and submits feedback for many different kinds of products and services. A centralized repository of reviews and customer transaction records will make it possible to eliminate deceit and skullduggery from the system.
Imagine a customer named Bob who purchases goods and services from multiple vendors over a three-year period. Bob’s transactions will reveal his satisfaction level with different products and services. If he purchases the same product repeatedly (in the presence of competing alternatives), it will reveal his happiness with the product. Conversely, if he switches over from one product to another or if he stops visiting a restaurant closer to his residence and chooses to eat the same cuisine at a different restaurant many kilometers away from his residence, it will reveal that he is unhappy with the restaurant.
Bob’s explicit and implicit reviews of a product or service will build a credible search index. A search result based on this index will be accurate and consistent.
The Wisdom of the Crowd
The wisdom of the crowd is the idea that large groups of people are collectively smarter than individual experts regarding problem-solving, decision-making, innovation, and prediction. James Surowiecki popularized this idea in his 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds, which examines how large groups have made superior decisions in pop culture, psychology, biology, behavioral economics, and other fields. A centralized repository of anonymous reviews and customer transaction records is the Voice of the People (VOP). A search engine based on the voice of the people is the perfect solution to fake and manipulated information.