DISQUS

HMTKSteve · 2 years ago

Not only do positive reviews make people suspect the product being reviewed by they also throw the reviewer into a negative light. If they only ever say positive things they come off as a shill.

You don't want a review to tear you a new one but you do need honesty. If some part of a product is bad you need to know!

Dan Schawbel · 2 years ago

Negative reviews are great for gaining precious feedback from your audience.

Drew Stauffer · 2 years ago

Any news is good news.

minicix · 2 years ago

Thats why 'bad advertisement is also an advertisement' works :)

Spence · 2 years ago

I entirely agree with these points, though I don't know what Andrew was looking at on the American Apparel site. They have some of the funniest and most biting negative reviews you will read anywhere.

Bettie · 2 years ago

I agree with Spence. What products were Andrew looking at??? There are quite a few products with nothing BUT negative reviews! And they are pretty HILARIOUS!

elliottng · 2 years ago

Andy, super interesting. I think I would rather embrace authentic conversations between my company and users, than "negative reviews" :) My company (Kango Inc.) is aggregating user reviews from across the Web on hotels and things to do for travel. We'll try to provide reviews that are most relevant for the factors that users might want to see based on their search. We highlight 4 reviews with the top review always being positive, but then the following 3 being randomly selected (from amount the relevant reviews for that search query). That way the user gets a better feel for the overall "review zeitgeist" of that hotel. Totally agree that providers can learn from negative reviews as they are often the clearest and most pointed reviews out there. We often run into false positives in identifying "clean" hotels, but NEVER misidentify "dirty" hotels!

Selbourne Designing · 2 years ago

Negatives reviews if responded correctly could in fact turn out to be a very beneficial marketing bit for your service or product.

Furniture Store · 2 years ago

So any publicity is good publicity?

Seriously though that was a good article, negative reviews do help you clean up your act so to speak.

Barry Welford · 2 years ago

Some excellent points there, Andy. I particularly liked the idea of correcting whatever points had caused problems. You could even add a comment in response outlining exactly what was done to correct the situation.

J · 2 years ago

Super good reviews are not easily believable. Someone is bound to have some negative comments about a certain product or service. Even the very best.

This is a good article. We shouldn't be happy about negative reviews but once someone gives a negative review we can use it to sort things out.

Great article