I am pleased to see this renewed interest since I first wrote about TripAdvisor censorship. Of course, this entire thread would be deleted if it was posted on the TripAdvisor forum and the TA moderators would have closed our accounts as they did mine. Thank goodness that FlyerTalk encourages frank and open discussion. As someone here commented, nothing good can ever come from censorship.

As an update, The Grand Hotel Plaza Rome continues to post fraudulent TripAdvisor reviews and my TA account is still closed because I had the audacity to comment about my awful experience at this run-down, manipulative, hotel. To rub salt in my wounds, TA continues to email me regularly reporting how many people have read my reviews (over 90,000) and asking me to submit more (how, pray tell?)

Tripadvisor is no longer reliable
 

I have posted both positive and quite negative reviews and have not had any problems with my account.

Same here.

You may have missed the point. TripAdvisor does not censor good or bad reviews. They censor any comments regarding suspected manipulation of reviews i.e. fraudulent reviews. They also censor forum postings regarding this practice of hotel reputation management and TripAdvisor's lack of enforcement.

I have been a long time member also but I get the most out of direct responses from my questions from the destination experts and from recent trip reviewers.
You're right the actual reviews are not too reliable as there was even a news report on 20/20 or some show like that where they even interviewed a person contracted to wirte fake good reviews.

I travel a lot in China and have found that some of the Tripadvisor hotel reviews there are written by members of an affiliate site called Daodao. They are written in Chinese, mostly by and for domestic travelers, but are no more reliable than the rest of the Tripadvisor family.

Not uncommon to find a string of several 5-star reviews in rapid succession that praise everything imaginable about a property, then actually stay there and be quite surprised and disappointed.

I just Googled the phrase “This post was determined to be inappropriate by the TripAdvisor community and has been removed.” and there are 1,400,000 results at the site www.tripadvisor.com
Clearly, TA is very busy censoring the views of the traveling public by deleting posts.
On the other hand, if you Google TripAdvisor fake reviews, there are over 4 million results.
Proof that censorship doesn’t work.

The first one is likely from the forum - where you get a lot of people advertising (e.g thread is "what transfer company should I use" and a user says "My transfer company XYZ travel is amazing" - it's against the T&C and is flagged inappropriate.) and trading insults with each other (just as mods here remove things).

I am too, and completely agree with your comments. I beleive i can't accurately assess hotels attributes that aren't important to me, or those I don't use..so I don't evaluate them.

I find TA helpful, and try to return the favor.

This ^ +1 and count me in. I'm an active reader on TA and hasn't written that many unpaid, unsolicited reviews on their sites, none of them censored or blocked - and wherever I can (always tried unless I rushed in late & checked out early) post & backup mine with photo documentation for fellow users curious. I'm counted by TA as their top 3% reviewers in the badge, and received absoutely zero compensation nor affiliated with those places that I've visited, stayed & eaten at, etc. - except for an appreciation gifted TA luggage tag (that's gotten a few looks at the checkin/lobby desk as I used it on my carryon.)

I do NOT bother with writing up a property when there's hundreds of updated/current review with photos, positive & negative, and neutral ones, unless I find something really out-of-bound to warrant my 2 cents. It is time consuming even while sitting at the lounge or terminal/gate waiting to board to write when I could be sipping my latte, napping or catching up on FT or whatever - or get restless cruising at 31,000 ft.

Chances are that you will see my reviews on TA as it's usually for those far away and off-the-beaten path & seldom reviewed places, and my contributions do give a fair heads-up for those planning to book a stay soon (i.e. slippery shower floor that splashed across & leaked into the carpeted floor due to poor design & leveling, emergency lightening that failed to work 18 stories up during a partial power outage) These are the ones that get the attention - and you know what, the property manager or corporate office that write/respond/acknowledge & read out to me are the ones that I truely appreciate and most likely will not cross them off on my re-visit list. It's the 5 star property that ignored and couldn't care less, and don't bother with a direct email that I will be wary of - and via TA and other means, to stay away from in the future.

Off-topic, another site that I use/write on sometimes, but fewer & fewer these days is YELP - it is clear (to me, anyway) that reviews are much easier to censor and/or their system can be tweaked by the advertised sponsors to the filtered. A local "hi-end" buffet that claimed to be among the best had 75+ reviews, with 30% filtered reviews is a clear sign that something isn't right - especially when more than 2 or 3 wrote about getting sick (GI symptoms) after eating there & management choose to ignore or not respond - playing dumb. Yours truely among those that rated this place poorly and believe me, word of mouth is just as effective and colleagues & associates of ours now all avoiding this place like a plague.

Back on TA - some of the most valuable insight while using TA are the traveler's photos - each is worth a thousand words as the old saying go, we do not transplant molds & mildrews, or broken a/c vent control or photoshop a dirty bathroom sink. If a room is truely small at 200 sq. ft. - it is small by most standards and is only "big & spacious" if you compare to our last balcony cabin on a mega cruise ship at 161 sq. ft. that sleep up to 4, barely. These resources were not available 15 or 20 years ago, except for the ones on site like travelocity, and we all know how reliable some of them were - now, one can google it up on the smartphone, iPad or tablet when away on a desktop, and quickly size it up before booking.

Faked/professional & paid reviews are out everywhere - if you look at it differently, and TA is no worst than others in cyberspace, you just have to use your common sense - whether it's yahoo, google, amazon, ebay or facebook page. Make it work for you as it's another free, useful app/tool - and if you suspect it's a fake, have a good laugh & move on ... ;) Hit the Exit button & close the browser, end of story.

I'm the same way. I generally won't bother reviewing a resort that gets like 5 reviews a day posted to TA.

It's the smaller, out of the way places that really benefit from having recent reviews. The smaller, less-visited and more obscure the locale is, the more likely I am to write a review for it.

That said, it would be nice if TA rewarded prolific reviewers... even a frigging discount coupon for a hotel once in a while on one of their endless promo e-mails would be nice!

Outpaddling: I agree that TA often shoots the messenger rather than cleaning up it's own act. And, it's not just the reviews but also in the threads. I spent 10 years as a manager for a property with a major chain, starting at the property the week it opened. There was another poster that had worked at the property when it was just raw land, for a company that couldn't afford to develop it. It was sold to the company that I went to work for and he lost his job. As a result, he has an irrational hate for the property and posts factually innaccurate information both in the threads and the reviews. He claims to be located in the town where the property is located but, in fact, lives 75 miles away---a fact that he acknowledged to me in a PM.

When I pointed out to TA that he was an admitted liar my account was also disabled. "Get the truth, then go is their motto. But it's really more like, let us lie to you, then take your chances. There are so many incorrect statements on that board that are floating around as 'truth' that it can't be trusted.

I publicly posted on the site that hotels should hold TA liable for inaccuricies that they publish or, that major chains such as the one I worked for and that spend many $'s advertising on TA should simply pull their advertising unless TA cleaned up their act. I even suggested that as still a stockholder (a very small one through a 401K) that I might write The Board of Directors of the chain I worked at and suggest that they consider that.

What, you don't feel motivated by their "badges?" :confused::p

Someone's laughing all the way to the bank bigtime for getting so many to contribute so much for free. They do seem to at least have some awareness their readers are doing a huge favor for the site with that.

Early on, Expedia actually tried sending back the first review I did for them, asking for more work. I sent 'em a scathing note saying that I was sorry the item I'd done FOR FREE wasn't meeting their needs somehow, but if they wanted something more detailed or done a certain way, maybe they should pay someone for it. I've never done anything for them again.

And then there's the all-time queen, Sheryl at biddingfortravel who'd actually suspend accounts that posted reviews but didn't originally book the hotel through her affiliate link. She couldn't see beyond just the one way of monetizing the operation, and lost untold amounts of valuable future content and data points as a result.

As for TA, they did once send me a cap, back in their early days. I treat it as a give-back-because-I've-also-benefited kind of thing. But I tend to only write when the mood strikes or there's time.

As for the deletions, they're probably being jabbed all the time by "reputation management" companies and their lawyers. It's a tough position to be in because they can't vouch totally for the accuracy of specific points that might be objected to like a newspaper or magazine could call a reporter in, debrief him and decide to stand by the story. The problem, of course, is that it can lead to excessive self-censorship.

Am sure they also have artificial intelligence algorithms that can flag certain words or pick up on patterns, like those who post only negative reviews (or, for that matter, only positive ones and without much geographic variance). Ebay, BTW, does this sort of pattern matching to catch shill bidders.

Would also second heraclitus's observation...my posts with the most helpful votes tend to be thinly reviewed budget places that show up among the lowest in price but have people needing reassurance it's not a dump.

Well, if you think about it, Simon was really the only judge on American Idol who mattered. People would listen attentively to Paula or Randy, but they wouldn't really take the encouragement to heart unless Simon concurred.

I point this out because with TA it's the accurate negative reviews that matter most. Without those the site loses its value. Positive reviews are good if they make the case and add information, but that's also part of the marketing function of the places reviewed.

It's totally understandable if a hotel feels it was treated unfairly, though if there are specific points that are just flat-out wrong, it'll probably waste no time and do a response directly disputing those. More often it seems to be stuff like "Don't stay here!" or "Dirtiest hotel I've ever been to!" or more-difficult subjective stuff like that. I won't even try to make a "dirty" case without photos.

It's a bit like the landlord-tenant back-and-forth...both groups have horror stories about the other side and there exist bad actors on both sides. I think some reviewers are hard to please or lack perspective or just aren't good at writing a fact-based case, but OTOH I think TA has led to awareness and better behavior from hotels that definitely wouldn't have happened otherwise. On balance I'd say we're better off with it than without it, but there are ongoing issues to work out.

Just a note on that, from a moderate understanding of the Google search algorithm. If you google Tripadvisor fake reviews (not in quotes), the 4 million results you get include all mentions of those words or subset of those words (which includes simply the two words Tripadvisor reviews).

Google search is not automatically a Boolean search, which would give you only sites with tripadvisor AND fake AND reviews.

If you google (in quotes) "Tripadvisor fake reviews" -- then you only get the 10,700 sites using that EXACT term, in that order.