How to Read Online Reviews Objectively

Reviews can be helpful, but they are incredibly subjective, and if you want to glean the most insight into a business’ reviews, it’s important to learn how to read them objectively.

Learning to read reviews objectively will help you make better buying decisions.

Whether you’re looking for the right HVAC company to fix your air conditioner or you’re hoping to make the right decision about which grill to purchase on Amazon, you rely on the reviews to help you make the right decision. However, reviews are incredibly subjective, and if you want to learn valuable information about the product or the business, you have to learn to read them objectively.

10 Tips to Help You Read Reviews More Objectively

Tip #1. Read multiple reviews.

Whatever business you’re planning on hiring or product you’re planning on purchasing is sure to have both positive and negative reviews online. If there are only one-star reviews, then that tells you a lot about the product or the business right there, and if there are only five-star reviews, it’s a red flag that not all of them are authentic.

Reading several reviews — including a good mix of both positive and negative reviews — will give you a better idea of the kind of service the business offers on a regular basis. It can be difficult to get a good idea of what working with a business is like when you read about just one customer’s experience. But when you read several, it’ll give you the information you need to make the right decision for you.

Tip #2. Check out reviews on multiple platforms.

You should never rely on just one review platform when you’re making a decision about which product to buy or which company to work with. Chances are, that business or product is listed on multiple review platforms, and if you read reviews from just one, you’re limiting the amount of information you can gain from the reviews.

Our advice is to read a few reviews from every platform the business or product is listed on. This way, if the business has focused on maintaining just one of those platforms, you’ll be able to gain a better understanding of what working with them is really like.

Tip #3. Ignore reviews that are overly specific.

When you’re reading reviews, you’re trying to gain an understanding of the general experience that most people have with a business or a product. This can be challenging when you consider the fact that most people who write reviews are writing them from their own standpoint. This kind of subjectivity gets in the way and hinders your ability to make the right decision on what to do with your money.

If a review mentions a specific employee by name, it’s a big red flag that the review you’re reading isn’t objective. For one, that employee may not even work for the company anymore, or they may have even been filling in temporarily. Either way, if a review talks about a specific employee, then it can’t really tell you much about the business in general.

Tip #4. Look for themes in five-star and one-star reviews.

Reading a handful of both five-star and one-star reviews is a great way to learn a lot about a business or a product quickly, but it’s important to read several in order to gain the best understanding of what you can expect. And when you do, make it a point to look for overarching themes.

Here’s a great example:

When looking for a set of free weights online, I had settled on two different products. Both of the products had a decent average star rating with hundreds of reviews. Upon reading several one-star reviews for both products, I learned that, on product A, a lot of people complained that the weights fell off of the bar and wouldn’t secure tightly enough, and on product B, most of the complaints centered around a chemical smell coming off of the weights. While I was not willing to take the risk of weights falling on my head, I was completely willing to accept the risk that my weights might have an odor.

Tip #5. Don’t just settle for reading one-star and five-star reviews.

While it’s important that you read one-star and five-star reviews on a business or a product, you don’t want to forget about all of the other reviews in between. In most cases, if a customer is happy enough to leave a five-star review, they may be willing to overlook issues other customers may have noticed. The same goes for customers who leave one-star reviews; they are often extremely upset — too upset to leave objective feedback.

Reading more two-star, three-star and four-star reviews is a great way to get down to the brass tacks of the issue. That’s because if a reviewer is truly being objective, they’re probably unlikely to see their experience as truly spectacular or truly horrendous. In most cases, the true experience lies somewhere in the middle, in the two-, three- and four-star reviews.

Tip #6. Check the reviewer’s previous submissions.

We all have varying opinions and beliefs, and it can be difficult to trust a purchasing decision to someone you’ve never met and have no idea whether or not they hold similar beliefs and opinions. And when the most information you have about a person consists of three sentences about a business or a product, it’s not easy to tell where they stand on things.

This is why it’s important to learn more of the reviewer’s thoughts and opinions by reading more of their reviews. This is especially helpful if they’ve reviewed something you’ve already bought or a business you’ve already worked with. But in general, even if you have no experience with other business or products the individual has reviewed, reading several reviews they’ve written will help you learn if they are super nitpicky or if they are extremely easy to please.

Tip #7. Take angry or vindictive reviews with a grain of salt.

Some people review a business because they want to help others gain a good perspective on the kind of service or products they have to offer, and some people review a business so that they can provide them with feedback they can use to get better and meet their customers’ needs more effectively. However, when some people write reviews, they do so because of reasons that are a little more nefarious.

If someone has had a particularly bad experience with a business, or even if they just don’t like the business owner or the employee who helped them, they might write a review out of spite to try to make the employee or company look bad. Watch out for profane language or threats in reviews, or personal attacks on details that have little to nothing to do with the product or service the business offers. And if you do notice these things in a review, disregard it or at least take it with a grain of salt.

Here’s a great example:

One of 2018’s Top Rated Local award winners had just one or two negative reviews on Facebook, one of which was from an angry woman who was upset that the individual driving the company’s van cut her off on the road. When you’re hiring a company to paint your home, whether or not their technician has ever cut anyone off on the road has very little bearing on the type of job they’ll do or the quality of their work.

#8. Consider the timing of the review.

When you’re trying to get an overall picture of what working with a company is like, it’s important to read several reviews. However, you can’t just pick a few random reviews in the hopes that they’ll give you the information you need. Instead, you really need to look at when those reviews were left.

For example, say a business has been around for 10 years and now have different owners. The reviews from six years ago probably don’t have a lot to do with the people who work for the business now or the kind of service they provide. Things are constantly changing, and the only way to get a good idea of what it’s like to work with a company now is to read about the most recent experiences their customers have had with them.

#9. Read the response from the business.

Reviews give us a very one-sided look at what it’s like to work with a business, and while learning about one side of the story can be helpful, it doesn’t give you the complete picture that you’re probably looking for. That’s why, if a company has taken the time to respond to its reviews, it’s important that you take the time to read them.

Reading a company’s response can be especially powerful when it comes to negative reviews. If a review isn’t legitimate or wasn’t written by a legitimate customer, the company will often respond to that effect. But even in the event that the review is legitimate and comes from a real customer or client, reading the company’s response will help you learn what kind of customer service they offer.

Because companies are built and maintained by human beings, mistakes are bound to happen. When you read the company’s responses to reviews, it gives you insight into how they fix their mistakes and win back unhappy customers — which is what true customer service is all about.

#10. Watch out for red flags.

If you’ve had a chance to read our previous blog — How to Determine if a Review is Fake — then you already know that fake reviews do exist, and they are unfortunately more common than many people are aware of. It’s not always easy to tell a fake review from a legitimate one, but there are some red flags that you can watch out for, and we went over many of them in our previous blog, so be sure to check it out.

Find the right local business for your needs with Top Rated Local.

Reviews, on the surface, can give you a lot of information about what it’s like to work with a business, but it’s important to know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to read them. We hope that this blog has given you some insight into what to look for in reviews and how to make the most out of business reviews.

If you’re sick of trying to separate the myth from the legend — the authentic from the fake — you’ve come to the right place. Top Rated Local was designed to help businesses overcome everyday obstacles, like fake reviews and competitor reviews, giving customers more insight and business owners more constructive feedback. So, the next time you’re looking for a plumber, a daycare center or any other local service, start with Top Rated Local!

Share this article!