Restaurant owners using sites like Chowhound for marketing?
I have noticed a trend lately on the Chowhound local boards. Rave reviews of restaurants by people who had never ever posted anything before that day. The descriptions of the food are so superlative, they know just a few too many "in the know" details about the place. It is pretty obvious that these are clearly marketing ploys by the restaurant. A few crafty people will post to a few responses to other topics that day, to give themselves an air of credibility.
Has anyone noticed this lately? It seems to be an epidemic, at least on the local boards I frequent. I recall I recently posted a not so flattering review of a brand new restaurant in my area, and all of these "new" people came out of the woodwork to state just how wonderful the restaurant was, with intricate detail of each meal they ate there. Clearly we must have eaten at different restaurants because these reviews were way over the top with superlatives. I was just so obvious. Is like they googled their restaurant and went out of their way to create as much buzz as possilble, albeit false buzz.
I guess since we are in a recession, restaurant owners need free publicity.
By AmblerGirl
on Jun 17, 2009 03:31 PM
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This is quite common. I think the best thing to do is click on the "report" button, and note that it is spam. The Chowhound staff will remove it if they agree.
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Report 'em. The mods can't read every post, but when you click the "report" button it calls their attention to a potential shill, and they're very good about them out.
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Make that "weeding them out."
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I've found Chowhound to be way less shill-y than most other food sites because suspicious posts can be reported and removed, just as milklady and alanbarnes noted. My new pet peeve, which I keep in a shoebox with air holes punched in the lid, is posters who participate in threads for the sole purpose of advertising their lame-ass personal blogs. You know who you are.
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We do allow a "sig" link to the front page of a poster's blog, however, if you see posts where people are linking to their blogs but not including content in their posts, please report those posts, as well.
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I do! I have! And sometimes it even works! But "content" can be such an imprecise term. Sometimes it looks like this:
GREAT suggestion! LOVE it! signed, my lame-ass personal blog.
I am too much of a lady to name names. But believe me, I could. Srsly, though, Team, y'all are doing an awesome job.
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Yeah, I've noticed a number of these on the NYC board. There's a place in my neighborhood that hasn't even opened, yet. When a fellow hound (a legit one) posted a heads up about the restaurant opening in the next week or so, a new poster suddenly appeared with gushy praise about the place. I'm so turned off, I really don't think I'll try the restaurant at all.
The good news is that the mods are really good about taking down shilly posts if you report 'em.
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We appreciate the help we get from people who use the Report button, but even if you're not sure it's a shill, we hope you will report it anyway. We investigate each post thoroughly, and remove posts when we see enough evidence (beyond an overexcited posting tone) to feel sure it's a shill. So please don't be concerned that you'll be damning an innocent by using the Report button- we have to be pretty sure about the shill status before we'll remove such a post.
Sometimes we won't remove a post that our users think ought to be removed. We hope everyone will trust our judgement in these situations, because we do have a lot of other information available to us than you folks will see. In some cases, we won't remove a post immediately, but will remove it later as other information becomes available. However, please be assured that we take each report of shilling very seriously and dedicate a lot of time to investigating them. If you have more information to corroborate a suspicion of shilling (such as seeing similar posts on other forums), we hope you'll note that in your report, or in an email to moderators@chowhound.com.
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Cimui, I've noticed an uptick in this sort of thing on the Manhattan board as well. I do usually hit "report" but sometimes I just wonder if it's a new person being overly enthusiastic or something. So thanks, Chow Team, for the info -- it makes me feel a whole lot more comfortable using the "report" button.
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The CH staff has been very quick to take action on suspicious postings or updates, especially if you report it. Thank you!!
- The recipe board is one place where new account 'bots' have flooded the database with bogus ones. Very wierd...
- Sometimes a new account (no profile or board posts, hmmmm) will update the description text in a Place with flowery, useless comments or even the whole frickin menu!
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What about this... This is a photo from Green River, Utah.. Sorry for the quality, I jumped out of the car and took the photo while the diners and staff watched me with great suspicion.
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That's actually kind of awesome. But I'd be half surprised if the owners even know about this site. "Chowhound" has been a word in American vocabulary since the mid-20th century.
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