Or
‘How sad and bored am I’
by Hannibal
Ever since the ‘guerilla marketing’ post under the news sections of this website was posted,
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/01/28
I have been very wary of any review I see online. So much so that I generally ignore reviews unless it can satisfy two criteria’s, 1 Length because it shows passion and actual knowledge, 2 experience because it shows that the reviewer isn’t someone who has only been ‘created’ to give a single review to a item.
So one day whilst remerging through Amazon.co.uk I checked out the Eldest reviews (thankfully only 67) and decided to do a quick analysis on the number of reviews people who reviewed Eldest had made.
5-4 Star Reviews ‘Good’
Average number of reviews : 1.5
Most common number of reviews : 1
1-2 STr Reviews ‘Bad’
Average number of reviews :4
Most common number of reviews 3 and 5
(Note when working out the average I ignored reviewers who had more than 15 reviews, as a single reviewer who had say 87 reviews would mess everything up. This effected both positive and negative reviews)
Now this brings up an interesting possibility. Could it be that a company like the one above was hired to create fake accounts, and then a fake review? (It should be noted that the majority of those who gave Eldest a good review, and had two reviews had chosen either Eragon or Eldest again for there second review.) If companies like the above exist for computer games and online forums, why not for books and online review sites?
I decided to do a bit more analysis to find out what the average review spread was for a book on the amazon.co.uk. (To keep this test fair, I kept the same website, genre, popularity and only changed the book.) This time I chose a Lord of the Rings paper back edition and Harry Potter (In case one was a fluke.)
Judging from the data below, book reviews should be made up of about 30% people who have never written a review before, and a corresponding number of people who have written more than 10, so why is Eldest different? Conspiracy or random paranoia?
| LoTR |
|
|
Eldest |
|
|
Harry Potter |
|
| % 1 Rev |
31.25 |
|
%1 |
38.1 |
|
%1 |
28.3 |
| % 2 Rev |
10.42 |
|
%2 |
23.81 |
|
%2 |
15.09 |
| % 10+ Rev |
29.17 |
|
%10+ |
11.9 |
|
%10 |
39.62 |
| % Other |
29.17 |
|
%Other |
26.19 |
|
%Other |
16.98 |
Obviously, and I can’t stress this enough, the above analyse is very basic, and doesn’t have enough data, if someone wants to go through the hundreds of reviews on Amazon.com instead there welcome. Unless I can find more books on Amazon.co.uk that have between 50 – 150 reviews then I can’t do much more.
Do I actually believe that there is a ‘guerilla marketing’ campaign of faked reviews? Not at the moment, do I believe it is possible? Certainly.
Legal notice : The above is my opinion only and not that of the site’s owners, it is speculation only. Further more before any Eragon supporters gets any ideas I am fully legally protected making the above statement under Justification and Fair Comment laws.
Common Sense Notice
“There are three types of lies : Lies, Dammed Lies and Statistics.”
