Is TripAdvisor censoring negative reviews?

Interesting. He posted the two reviews on the 13th and had you on the case by the 17th. I am not a fan of TA or placing a lot of faith in consumer reviews in general (everyone has a different expectation).

Does TA have a policy to automatically manually review any 1 or 2 star ratings? To me it seems reasonable that a poor rating could do more damage to a brand and open TA to liability (perhaps) than a positive one.

In real life, does anyone go around badmouthing a product based on one person’s past experience?

That is not to say his complaint and review is not accurate, but I would think a scathing review might deserve a bit more scrutiny than others. If I had to guess, someone manually looked into his past reviews for a pattern, maybe scoped out an IP address, and did a scan for a similar writing style prior to publishing it.

Will be interesting to hear TA’s response.

I know from experience that when one writes reviews at TripAdvisor, some of them are flagged for confirmation and listed on one’s user page as “pending.” I don’t know what algorithm they use to do this, but I think that one-star reviews are more likely to be flagged. You get an e-mail asking you to confirm the review and perhaps the reviews are looked at by a real person. Communication about this from TripAdvisor could be a little better, but the policy seems reasonable.

I looked at Mr. Leon’s review, using your link, and I have to say that it’s of the kind that I, as a TripAdvisor reader, would probably skip over. I’m sure he genuinely had a bad time and that the hotel has quite a bit to answer for. But the review is really long (perhaps another potential flag) and written in slightly hyperbolic language. Usually people who genuinely hate a place still find something small to praise. For Mr. Leon everything was totally bad, which makes it a little hard to trust what he says, because it’s clear he’s so mad that he’s lost his objectivity. I doubt though that the tone of the review had anything to do with TripAdvisor waiting to publish the review, but it would be justified for TripAdvisor to delete reviews which are really, truly abusive.

It is pretty easy really. Trip Advisor advertises: Get the truth. then go. If they think that they need to put some quality control procedures in place to guard against one star reviews then they need to communicate those procedures. Good job on following up on this. I am interested to see what else you find.

The guy also joined TA that day. They probably carefully review highly crticial reviews on new members. I agree with the previous post. if someone can not say one positive thing, then I skip the review since the person lost their objectivity.

As a follow up to Mark Leon’s post defending his TA post.

I agree completely with you.

I also go after bad companies (Elliott posted my vendetta against United where I cost them up to 200+ flights from Alaska) and…

I praise companies like American Airlines which just went way beyond to help me. (I sent Elliott a post which I hope he will use soon)

This is the only way to have some control of these business.

Hurt the bad ones, promote the good ones.

I have been going to Mexico for 50yrs+ & it sucks when you have to pick a place cold. Especially when you picked a bad one.

Mark & all you other posters. Make it a point to do this. Post on these places. The good & the bad.

Whether or not a reader would likely skip over a potential review shouldn’t be a valid justification for TA not to post it on their site. I certainly can see a profanity-laced review being omitted, as well as a review that is just plain absurd (i.e. aliens abducted me in the night and hotel management didn’t do anything to help), but a review that is too long or lacks enough objectivity is a criteria for the reader.

I can understand why some of you have said you would skip a lengthy tirade of a review when it appears the author has an axe to grind (not necessarily saying thats the case here), but let’s say there were 10 reviews for a particular hotel and 7 of them were tirades, would you ignore all 7 negative reviews? Do you think you’d get an accurate picture of the hotel from the 3 “reasonable” ones if that is all that was listed? Wouldn’t you rather decide for yourself?

I believe that this was a technical glitch of some kind. I have been posting on Trip Advisor for several years, and every bad review I’ve written has been posted in a timely manner. In addition, I use the site whenever I plan a trip, and I have read hundreds of terrible reviews. There are properties listed on there that have no good reviews at all. If you do a random check of properties on the site, you’ll see that there are probably more bad reviews than good ones.

I wrote a five-star review for one of my favorite restaurants in the world. In my review, I referenced the fact that although the food was amazing and I would eat there every single day if I could, I felt that it was petty and childish for the owners to selectively respond to the negative reviews on TripAdvisor in the manner they did. (Aside: All of the negative reviews were about the price, as this was a fine dining restaurant in a developing nation where a meal cost significantly more than a night in a hotel.) TripAdvisor held my five-star review in limbo for almost a week, then rejected it for the same reason Mark’s review was rejected- it referenced other TripAdvisor posts. They sent me back the text of the review, I took out the parts where I talked about the owner’s petty online attitudes, and the review was posted. I don’t think it’s a huge TripAdvisor scam, I just think it’s users not being aware of all the nit-picky rules. By sending me back the text of the review so I could bring it into line, I think TripAdvisor did everything they could.

I read the guys review – and am wondering – what ‘guidelines’ did it violate? He did not refer to anyone, except employees of the resort, by name, did not name other reviewers . .. this sounds an awful lot like make up an excuse for why it was not posted. I am not seeing any reference in the review to ‘other posters.’ Seems like bs from TA. .

I agree with Allison that it would be nice to see the original, rejected post to TA. If he was just saying he disagreed with other reviews (which is obvious without him saying it), that seems unreasonable on the part of TA. If he essentially called other reviewers “morons” or the like, that’s another matter.

(I can see why TA would disallow references to other posts; it is an objective standard that keeps them from having to decide what’s appropriate and what crosses the line into the inflammatory. As long as they’ve clearly communicated all their standards, they’re fine. It does seem that they could let people know, however, if something doesn’t pass a review.)

However, I disagree with Allison that Leon has “gone after” other posters here. He addressed their comments/objections respectfully, without attacking or belittling them. His posts here seem entirely appropriate. The only thing I wondered about is his apparently not seeing the connection between TA’s review of his post there, and its contents. The contents are indeed an issue if they have caused TA to take the action they did, and to ignore that while alleging it’s because his review was negative does not mesh with the facts we have at this point.

Interesting set of comments. I note that I’ve been posting on TripAdvisor for several years (generally great or bad but not mediocre). I just posted a review that started by directly referencing another review — It was posted almost immediatly. So clearly that’s not complete reason for a delay in posting. I also note that I do seem to be seeing a lot more questionable reviews. I note that the New Zealand reviews lined up VERY closely with the Qualmark rating system they have.

Mark – thanks for posting the deleted part. It all makes sense now. While I can understand why you don’t really get TA’s reasons for rejecting your review, the fact is that your words, while not mentioning any particular person, IS directed to prior reviewers – and it’s a bit condescending. Put yourself in the place of one of the prior positive reviewers: let’s say you stayed at a hotel 4 times, loved it, posted a fabulous review – and somebody posted those words directed at YOU. You would probably feel a bit insulted yourself.

So…the mystery is solved. Based on the facts as presented here, there is clearly no nefarious plot to withhold negative reviews. You may not agree, but the bottom line is that that one paragraph in you review violated their rules. Without it, it didn’t. Simple as that.

By the way, I recently posted a fantastic review of a hotel in Stockholm. It too was left “pending” for over a week…which was rather bizarre, given that it’s pretty obvious it was real. I’ve posted several reviews on TA, for properties around the world, for several years. I’ve got my travel map all plotted out in there, adding locations every few months. I’m obviously a real traveler, and there was no reason for my review to be suspect. I still have no idea what took so long…but it’s up there now. Perhaps it got flagged for who knows what reason (it was really long and included lots of details), and it just took that long for a human to look at it and realize it was real.

So the moral of the story is, next time someone’s review is held up by TA, don’t immediately assume a conspiracy. It could just be TA doing its job.

@Mark Leon
I just wanted to say I am on your side. From what I have read of your writing, there is nothing objectionable about it, here or on TA. I just booked a trip to Ecuador based on reviews I found on TA. It will be interesting to see if everything pans out or if the places aren’t as good as reviewers claimed.

I’ve also experienced delays in TA postings as a user. But as an industry insider who has some insight into the process that TA and other review sites use to combat fraudulent posts, I think there is an explanation that is far less sinister — not just as to why there are delays, but as to why they would not want to tell you why a review wasn’t approved for posting. I’m not saying that review sites never have conflicting motives – some do – but even a site with pure motives is going to have this issue.

There are many factors that can (and should) cause posts to be flagged as possibly fraudulent (and this plays both ways – bad reviews posted by a hotel’s competitors, good ones by hotel management). Some have to do with the content of the review itself, but many are in the realm of Internet forensics. For example, three users might post bad (or good) reviews about a hotel, but forensics might show that they all came from the same computer and IP address, so it’s possible to state, with a high level of confidence, that it was almost certainly one user who created three accounts, and at least two of the reviews (quite possibly all three) must be fraudulent.

You’d be surprised how many ways the posts you make on a website can be analyzed forensically, and from what I have seen and heard, sites like TA use some very sophisticated techniques to detect fraud.

The review sites don’t really want the general public to know about all the forensics they use to detect false posts for the same reason that the TSA doesn’t want the public to know everything they do to prevent bad guys from boarding airplanes: if the methods are known to the public, then they are known to the bad guys, and the bad guys are smart enough to find a way around them.

As the traveling public, we can’t have it both ways. We want sites like this to post all valid reviews immediately, and we also want them to post no bogus reviews, ever. Any system they put in place to try to distinguish one from the other is going to (a) be imperfect; (b) cause delays, especially when human staff need to get involved; and (c) result in angst among reviewers whose valid reviews get rejected or delayed. It’s simply the price we have to pay for a higher degree of fairness. I don’t take it personally when my postings get delayed. I’d be upset if one got fully rejected, but I wouldn’t assume it was censorship; I’d figure it was simply a case where the system that’s there to enforce integrity made a mistake.

In the case of a review that’s rejected because of its content, I’d like to see the sites tell the reviewer why, at least with a form response. But I don’t see how it’s in the traveling public’s interest, when they forensically detect a review that has a high probability of being fraudulent, for them to tell the reviewer exactly how they reached that conclusion – so that he/she can find a way around their controls the next time!

I do think some of the sites could do a better job of explaining why, when they reject a post, they can’t always provide detailed reasons. Hiding behind the privacy shield isn’t the answer in most cases. On the other hand, I believe that at least the larger, more reputable sites are mostly trying to be fair and balanced in their approach, in a situation where it’s just not possible to be perfect.

Being in IT, I appreciate the efforts TA has to make to try to ensure the fairness and neutrality in reviews, positive or negative. However, they have gone almost all the way, but are just short of getting it right, in my opinion..

When Adrianne from TA contact me (see the end of Chris’s blog entry, above), I sent them the following back:

_________________________________________
Adrianne -

All TripAdvisor had to do was to drop me an email that said :

“Your review was flagged as it may not meet our guidelines for submissions (http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/our_guidelines_for_traveler_reviews). Your submission will be shown in ‘Pending’ state while it awaits a more in-depth review by our content moderators. While our reviews are usually processed within a few days, occasionally it takes our moderation team a little longer.”

That would have done it for me, I would have been satisfied.
_________________________________________

I think this would be a valuable addition to TripAdvisor’s user interface, and would have headed off my issue at the pass….

@Carly – I’m with ya. Seriously, this entire article turned out to be a non-story…it was just TA following its standard, NON-nefarious, NON-sinister practices.

It is not TA’s responsibility to notify every person who’s review doesn’t meet their guidelines. That takes time – it takes human effort, which costs money. TA is a free service to us…if we want them to hold our hands through the process of writing and posting a review, they might not be able to continue to offer us this service for free. Human labor costs money.

The fact is, everything Mark needed to know about how to write his review, what was happening to his review, and why his review might not be accepted was right there at his fingertips for him to read on his own. In the very link that he sent to TA, saying they should have sent to HIM (which he clearly managed to find on his own), it says this:

“Please do not include questions for other reviewers or comments about other reviews, reviewers or management responses.”

His first (rejected) review included the following paragraph:

“I don’t know how the folks on here could possibly give this place a good review at the price. I can only assume that this is folks who haven’t stayed anywhere else. If you’ve stayed here 4 times and loved it I have a suggestion – TRY SOMEWHERE ELSE for heaven’s sake and see what you are missing… There is a world of travel possibility out there, see what you are missing, please. It will be eye-opening.”

It obviously breaks the rules. Not only is it commenting about other reviewers, it’s speaking directly TO them, saying in a rather snarky way that they really need to get out more. I know that if *I* was a prior positive reviewer, I would have felt insulted by that paragraph – it’s essentially saying that I must be an inexperienced traveler and maybe even a moron to think this place is good. I don’t blame TA one bit for rejecting it.

Why should TA be responsible for spoon-feeding us the information that they already provide us, giving us step-by-step, detailed instructions on how to properly use their site?

@Mark – you say that a personal response from TA would have “headed off your issue at the pass”. But the truth is, you created your own issue by submitting a review that violated TA’s guidelines. I’m sorry that you didn’t get the hand-holding you felt you needed – and I’m sure that more hand-holding from TA would be nice. But IMO, they do enough as it is. Next time, read the guidelines in detail first. That would have “headed off your issue at the pass”…and it wouldn’t have resulted in public accusations of nefarious and sinister plots to subvert the traveler-review process.

Its easy after the fact to tell someone what is and what would not be prohibited speech. If you look at the title of the review below mine, its obvious that what consititutes ’snarky’ prohibited speech varies from moderator to moderator on TA.

As I said, if I do something wrong, I should to be notified by TA – my review hung out for a week pending with no notice of why. Notification from web sites is standard behavior of web-enabled applications nowadays, and it is EXPECTED. If that is how TripAdvisor works, that is how it works. But in this day of email and automated status messages (I get them from Craigslist, my bank, credit card company, FedEx, and other forums) I found TA’s system to be antiquated and confusing… I am an computer geek by trade. So if I find it to be confusing, I am sure others do as well….

I do not consider TA to be entertainment – its a forum that help me protect my valuable vacation dollars, and that of others. And it helps the business of owners of good restaurants and hotels in their competition against others that do their business shabbily. I have already have 5 people post that the review was helpful, so if that helps them have a better vacation, I am satisfied.

I can post stuff for sale on Craigslist with more transparency that TA. I think thats a shame.

@Mark – okay, so now that all the information is out, the point of the article (and your problem with TA) seems to have shifted from “Is TripAdvisor Censoring Negative Reviews?” to “Why Isn’t TripAdvisor Personally Notifying Everyone Who Sends a Rejected Review, as to Why it Was Rejected?”

I understand why you have a problem with not getting notified. I really do. It would be nice if they did. Of course, you didn’t give it all that much time — how long did you wait, before you wrote Chris suggesting that they were “cherry-picking” reviews? You may very well have recieved your notification had you just been patient.

I still think that it’s pretty obvious why it was rejected – I certainly wouldn’t have included that verbiage in a review – but then I read their guidelines before I ever submitted one, so I already knew that they don’t allow reviews to directly comment to other reviewers. As for whether or not it was “snarky”, that was my word, not theirs. They probably rejected it simply because it was breaking the rule of directing comments to other reviewers – which is explained pretty unambiguously in thier guidelines.

In any case, the sad thing is that there is now this big ol’ headline on Christopher’s page here, and on Tripso, suggesting that TA censors negative reviews – when there is not a stitch of evidence to back that up. Yes, that will for sure encourage more people to submit their own reviews to TA. Thanks for helping to make it an even LESS effective tool for travelers.

Mark sounds like the kind of poster I also tend to ignore: Someone looking for revenge. The comment he made about steering several potential customers away from a car dealer he had a bad experience with on one car purchase says a lot about his personality and character: Do something I don’t like, and I’ll make you pay.

The fact that he had joined Trip Advisor on the day he posted such a “scathing” review would definitely have been a red flag. I think TripAdvisor simply wanted to make sure the rant was legit before posting it. And I’m definitely not buying his excuse for removing the positives.

I’ve posted reviews — both good and bad — with Trip Advisor. On one, I was disputing a claim made by another poster (who had outright lied — she was complaining about something that didn’t even exist on the property), but because I mentioned her, the post was initially rejected. Trip Advisor told me why my review had been rejected and posted it after I removed the “unapproved” content.

Jon, I agree with most (but not all) of your points. My sole issue with this entire article is that it’s really much ado about nothing…and TA has now been painted with a decidedly unflattering brush, for the sole crime of taking a bit long to respond to a poster.

So it took a few days for TA to get back to him. It’s a FREE WEBSITE – they have no obligation to us, other than to be fair and honest in what they put out there for the public to read. That’s where I disagree with you: we are not entitled to “customer service” from them! We are not paying them for their service – we’re not customers! So we have no right to expect hand-holding, or specific turn-around times. We can wish for it, and we can complain when we don’t think they’re fast enough. But to write to a travel ombudsman about a few days delay in a response? From a free website? Isn’t that being a bit…well…whiney?

What’s WORSE, however — far worse — is that this truly trivial incident of a rejected review and lack of a fast-enough response has resulted in a big fat headline on a couple of widely-read travel sites suggesting that TA is “censoring negative reveiws”. There is nothing – ZERO – in what happened between Mark and TA to suggest that. Not one thing. Nor is there anything to suggest they “cherry-pick”, as Mark stated in the article.

Regarding communicating their rules “before the fact: Did I read the entire FAQ on TA before I submitted my first review? Heck no. I did skim it so I’d get a feel for what’s acceptable, and it jumped out at me that I should leave out any comments about prior reviewers. The review sections is not a message forum – they don’t want the kind of back-and-forth and flame wars that happen on message forums.

Are their guidelines a little ambiguous? Sure. The very nature of it dictates that – it’s based on human judgement of opinions. Can’t get more ambiguous than that. There are likely a number of different moderators, who all may interpret the guidelines slightly differently, so that one might reject something that another would accept. That’s just human nature. But in my opinion, after reading Mark’s original review, not a single TA moderator would have passed that one through. It blatantly violated the rules.

Obviously the positive review didn’t raise any red flags, so it was posted quickly. And once he removed the offensive content, his negative review was posted promptly as well. Had he included similar, direct-to-prior-reviewers comments in his positive review, I’m sure it would have been held up as well. Again: no conspiracy. Just the standard process.

So, in the end, the WHOLE POINT of this article is that he felt they didn’t get back to him very fast. Maybe they were busy. Is that really worthy of all this bruhaha, accusations of censoring and cherry-picking, and sturm-und-drang?

Like I said – much ado about nothing.

To Mark AND Chris,

As an earlier story about a “fake” review that after I contacted the reviewer, he posted to say he was real, this one again ends out being a non-issue. The original review had VERY condescending language.

Also, Mark, for your information “rock hard” is and adjective and is an OPINION. (Unless you’ve slept on Chinese beds, don’t get me started) AND “SAWING THROUGH THE GRISTLE” you mean she used a REAL saw to cut the meat? Since “sawing” means to cut with a saw.

Yea, all fact huh?

Wow, there sure are lots of opinionated people blasting Mr Leon for his negative review having to much detail.
I could care less if y’all ignore detailed reviews. Personally, those are the ones I look for. I travel 48 to 50 weeks a year so have had a few really crappy experiences, and those reviews of mine on TA tended to sound like Mr Leon’s. I received favorable responses form other users to my posts. (Well, thats not exactly true. Out of 6 “completely” negative responses I posted to TA, only 4 are available on the site for review. I guess the others are still in that Pending stage that was discussed earlier.)

And for someone to blast him for steering his friends away from a car dealer because of an issue he had with them, that makes no sense. Sounds like someone looking for something to bitch about. I would be thanking him.