- The third edition of Tripadvisor’s Review Transparency Report analyzes community contributions for the full year from 2022 to reveal review submission trends
- Total valuations increased +20% to over 30.2 million, while business listings reached 11.1 million, up +16% from the previous report in 2020.
- 1.3 million reviews were identified as fake and removed, with 72% of them caught before they were published, up from 67% in 2020
Needham, Mass.And April 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Tripadvisor®the world’s largest travel guidance platform, has released the third edition of its Review Transparency Report, which reveals detailed trends on review contributions and steps taken to ensure the integrity of user-submitted content.
Published biennially, the report analyzes a full year’s worth of community contributions—more than 73 million reviews and opinions in total—to give readers an in-depth look at World Reports. The report also reveals how audit trends have changed since 2020, when the previous version of the report was published. The main directions include:
Strong growth for reviews and business listings
The report reveals a significant increase in the volume of reviews left on the platform during 2022 – +20% increase from 2020 levels to 30.2 million – as World Explorers returned to strength after two years of lockdowns and restrictions. During 2022, Tripadvisor also saw business owners respond to more than 10 million comments, while community members asked and answered more than 940,000 questions from fellow users.
As the global recovery continues in 2022, the platform has seen an influx of new listings created, with 1.3 million new companies added to the site, resulting in 11.1 million listings at the end of the year, up +16% from the 2020 total of 9.6 million. Regionally, two out of five newly listed companies are in Europewhile Asia And north america each accounting for about 23% of the total.
Successfully combating fake and paid reviews
Only a fraction of total review submissions from 2022 (4.4%) were identified as fake or fraudulent, totaling just over 1.3 million. Of those, Tripadvisor’s strong detection and moderation processes prevented 72% of submissions from reaching the platform, a significant improvement over the 67% blocked during 2020.
Reviews from paid review firms account for a smaller percentage of fraudulently submitted content, but they have a very real ability to negatively affect consumer confidence. In all, Tripadvisor removed 24,521 reviews associated with paid review companies in 2022. Almost half of these reviews originated from just six countries: IndiaAnd Russiathe United States, Türkiye, ItalyAnd Vietnam.
Once fraudulent content is identified and removed, Tripadvisor takes a range of actions against the infringing businesses, including content blocking, rating penalties and, in severe cases, red flags. The Review Transparency Report reveals that Tripadvisor imposed a rating penalty on more than 33,000 companies for fraud and issued 341 red flag warnings in 2022, each with a rating penalty.
He said “Tripadvisor is built on trust, and we will never stop improving our systems to ensure our community has access to trusted content and that listed companies can compete on a level playing field.” Becky FoleyVice President, Trust and Safety at Tripadvisor. “The results of this report show that our approach is working; we detect a higher proportion of fraudulent content before it is published, with nearly three-quarters of fake reviews never hitting the platform.”
Progress in helping to keep travelers safe
During 2022, the Tripadvisor community posted nearly 600 reviews that described a serious safety incident during a travel or dining experience. Listings associated with these types of reviews, are subject to additional measures intended to raise awareness among travellers.
Tripadvisor is able to place additional filters on lists associated with reviews that contain serious warnings or allegations, helping users to more easily identify potentially problematic businesses. And this approach clearly works, with reviews that detect a serious safety incident ten times more likely to be read, than reviews that don’t.
“I am extremely proud of our efforts to highlight the most disturbing review content submitted by our community,” Becky Foley. “Sharing the details of traumatic incidents takes courage and all those who have been brave enough to share their experiences will hopefully derive enthusiasm from the fact that their opinions are being seen by others and making a difference in the real world.”
The full 2023 Tripadvisor Review Transparency Report can be viewed at this link: http://tripadvisor.com/TransparencyReport2023
About Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor, the world’s largest travel guidance platform*, helps hundreds of millions of people every month** become better travelers, from planning to booking to a trip. Travelers around the world use Tripadvisor and its app to discover where to stay, what to do and where to eat based on the guidance of those who have visited before. With over a billion reviews and opinions on nearly 8 million businesses, travelers turn to Tripadvisor to find deals on accommodations, book experiences, reserve tables at delicious restaurants, and discover great places nearby. As a travel guidance company available in 43 markets and 22 languages, Tripadvisor makes planning easy no matter the type of trip. Tripadvisor affiliates, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIP) is a group of travel media brands and companies operating under various websites and applications.
*Source: SimilarWeb, Unique Users Unduplicate Monthly, January 2023
** Source: Tripadvisor internal log files
Source Tripadvisor