by Stephanie A. Smith

Created on: February 20, 2009   Last Updated: September 27, 2010

With the age of web 2.0 and online commerce, most reviews are now to be found online, and anyone can write a review about anything. They can write on their own website or blog, a user-generated content site, or on just about any online store's product pages (think of the reviews on Amazon).

However, you cannot always trust these on-line reviews.

When you find a review on a person's website or on one of the user-generated content sites that pay, you can generally trust these reviews, because they are written by professional reviewers, many of whom take the time to discover all of the pros and cons of any product before they write about them. It is usually the reviews that you find on the product pages that have to be treated with the most caution. This is where the vast majority of reviews are. There can be hundreds of reviews written on a single product page.

Take a look at any one of these that isn't a review for a book, movie, or some other piece of artistic work, anything that you use on a daily basis that has several reviews on its page. You notice that the reviews conflict with one another. You almost always get people who write that the product didn't work right or that something broke, then you get people who say that the product was perfectly fine and that there was no problems whatsoever with it.

One such example is a set of screwdrivers that is specially designed for putting scopes on rifles and handguns. The bits are designed to break before you do damage to the scope or its mount, or the weapon itself. There were a few reviews on the page, several saying that the bits were junk because they broke while being used, and a couple saying that they didn't know what the others were talking about because that bits were designed to break that way. A person who just looked at the first review or who just looked at the average rating would have not bought the screwdriver set because of the low rating given to it, but someone who takes the time to read each review independently would.

You cannot trust just any product review, but you can usually separate the good ones from the bad ones by using the following methods.

Most product pages and review sites give you an average rating on the product featured. In most cases, forget this rating immediately, unless there are several rates and the average rating is at the top or at the bottom of the scale used. This is usually based on a 5 star system. People disagreeing with one another usually puts the rating somewhere in the middle.

Never read just one review, read at least one from someone who loved it, someone who hated it, and someone in between. That way, you get an overall view of the product. A person who hated a product will generally ignore the good points and someone who loved it will overlook something wrong.

Discount all one line reviews, such as "I loved this!" or "This is such a piece of junk, stay away from this!". If a person cannot take the time to tell you why they loved or hated the product, why are they even writing the review? A detailed review is also more likely to discuss all of the pertinent details.

When reading a review on an artistic piece (books, movies, etc), take the vast majority view into account, unless you like to watch little-known movies. These pieces are published and made to make money, which can only be done with the majority in mind.

If you take the time to look through the reviews on a product, you can save yourself trouble and time later, as well as have a better experience with the product.

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