Review Spam Detection by Highlighting Potential Spammers and Diminishing Their Effect

Introduction

Almost immediately after the advent of the Internet and the Web technology, individuals as well as public and private organizations became interested in marketing their products and services on the Web. Since then, the utilization of the Web for selling products became rapidly pervasive such that nowadays it constitutes a considerable proportion of the Internet usage. Along with advertising on the Web and in addition to the independent sites that allow for product evaluation, vendors have given their audience the authority to evaluate and comment on the merchandise. Having this feature available and in most cases added to retailing websites, may be beneficial to both parties, i.e., producers and consumers. Companies can analyze the provided reviews to learn the strengths and weaknesses of their goods and services from consumers’ points of view. They can further apply their conclusions in future to achieve higher levels of satisfaction from consumers, as well as to attract more people towards buying their merchandise. Moreover, they can investigate purchasers’ reviews of products of competitor companies to become aware of the general appetite of consumers: their preferences, priorities, etc. Considering the admirable features of competing products in purchasers’ opinions, producers can improve their own products by adding or magnifying those features. Further, by becoming aware of discreditable characteristics of products from rival companies, manufacturers will make sure not to strengthen those characteristics in their production or maybe to consider deficiencies before they are realized by customers. On the other hand, since the ability to review products online is made available for people, they can easily post their comments on their desired products at any time, from any part of the world, and at their own convenience. Consequently, a large number of opinions with a significant variety of ranking may be encountered. This also gives at almost no cost the opportunity to competitors to watch how their products have been received by consumers. Possessing sentiments of previous consumers of different interests and expectations, individuals can distinguish their most preferred goods or services faster and straighter than the time when such an integrated collection of opinions was not available. Therefore, presently, individuals rely extensively on reviews available online. This means they decide whether to buy products or not by analyzing existing opinions on those products. In fact, when a potential customer gets a positive overall impression of a product by considering its present sentiments, it is highly probable that he/she will act more in favor of purchasing the product. Normally if the percentage of positive opinions is considerable, it is likely that the overall impression will be highly positive. Likewise, if the overall impression is negative, it is less imaginable that vendees buy the product. Again, the overall negative impression can be the result of a great proportion of negative sentiments. The results of a survey conducted in early 2012 indicate that 51% of the customers have used Internet more than 6 times during a year while 72% of them have the same trust in online reviews as they have in personal recommendations (Anderson, 2012).