Keeping Pace With the Explosion in Popularity and Innovation of Online Consumer Reviews

While most retailers now accept customer reviews as an essential component of product content, there have been plenty of missteps along the way. First merchants tried to ignore reviews, until sites like Epinions and later Angie's List and Yelp gained enough credibility with consumers to make that impossible. Some sought the easy way out by buying fake reviews, but savvy consumers and researchers quickly caught on. (So did the New York attorney general, who last year cracked down on such "astroturfing.")