What do you expect as a viewer when you're watching a review? I would assume
you at least would expect the reviewer to buy or own the product that they're reviewing and
have some sort of experience using that product. So, they could share that experience with you.
Whether it's good or bad. But what if I told you that on YouTube none of this even matters because
you can make a review about the product without ever owning it,
using it or even knowing what it is. These are what I call fake reviews. Of course
we would all like to think that we're pretty good at spotting when someone is lying to us.
Or when something is completely fake but the reality is. It's getting harder and
harder to tell a fake review apart from a real one. And Hostinger reviews are no exception.
There has been a ton of fake web hosting reviews appearing on YouTube with the goal to mislead and
profit from consumers and the chances are if you've been searching for web hosting reviews
you've actually seen these fake videos. And, the purpose of this video is to
uncover the dark and misleading side of the web hosting review industry.
Imagine you're on the market for some web hosting so you open up YouTube, type in some
search terms and find a video that's reviewing Hostinger. The video looks completely legit right?
Not quite, if you look a little closer you realize that most of the footage used in this video is
just bits and pieces taken from other sources or just free stock footage. For example, here
where the reviewer talks about using and testing the Hostinger's interface. This footage is stolen
from a video Hostinger itself uploaded back in 2018, 3 years ago. The dashboard doesn't look like
this anymore. So, there's no way the reviewer is actually testing the current Hostinger interface
and this doesn't happen with just Hostinger. For example, in the video about SiteGround, another
web hosting provider they mentioned how easy it is to use the interface and this footage is shown.
Again this footage is stolen from somewhere and completely irrelevant at this point as you can see
here this plan expired back in 2019. SiteGround does not look like this anymore. But, they claim
it's a 2021 review. But borrowing footage and passing it on as your own is absolutely nothing
new at this point. In this industry nobody gets even impressed when you do that, those are rookie
numbers in this racket. The real question is can you fake performance data to make your reviews
even more believable? Well, let's take a look at another example from the same review channel
Hostinger Review 2021 is Hostinger worth it? And, in true fake review fashion of course it
was published in 2020 and just has the 2021 in the name to trick you. But, anyways there's a
performance testing segment that supposedly tests Hostinger's speed and gives you, the viewer, an
estimate of what you can expect. But these tests are definitely, definitely not testing websites
hosted on Hostinger. For these speed tests they're clearly testing the Hostinger.com homepage,
not their own website. It doesn't make much sense! Just to put into perspective of how absurd and
inaccurate this is here's an example: It's like writing a restaurant review based on a burger you
ordered, but for the taste test you bite directly into a cow standing in the field outside. Because,
you never ordered the burger and you figured well it comes from the cow. So, it's probably the same.
Spoiler alert it is not the same, it's not even close to being the same. Stop me here if I'm wrong
but I do believe that a Hostinger does not use a $0.99 plan and a plain WordPress installation
to run their massive business. So, testing their homepage speed has absolutely nothing
to do with how fast their web hosting is. You're only determining how fast are these servers
that Hostinger is hosting their website on. It doesn't make sense, but it gets better or should
I say worse. For the uptime statistic they don't even do a test at all. They just take a random
graphic element from the Hostinger's website and claim the uptime is 99.97%. It's like writing a
cereal review and saying "They're great". Because, well the tiger on the box said so. And the tiger
wouldn't lie... now would he... And the images on Hostinger's website are just that, they're just
images. They're not tests, they're not analytical data, they're just images put on their website to
represent a specific statistic. In this case it's clearly website speed, not even website uptime
as the reviewer claims. So, it's obvious to me that they are exploiting the lack of knowledge
from their viewers to look more legit. They're just throwing in some random numbers, with random
pictures and hoping you don't even notice. And just take their word for it these channels will
pretty much fake everything that can be faked. If that saves them time and money because you see the
goal of the channel is to make as much money as possible, by spending as little money as possible,
your needs as the viewer or consumer simply do not fit into this plan, sorry. I've spent a couple of
days watching various videos these fake channels make and. I've compiled some statistics about the
footage they use this is how it looks: 40% of the footage used in the reviews is stolen and most
often outdated. 26% of the footage used is taken from the web hosting provider's advertisements.
22% of the footage used is stock photos or clips that are available online for free. And just 12%
is somewhat original. But, that's mostly a picture of the home page or just a screen recording of
the pricing table. These types of channels are making objectively false and misleading claims
just to milk out that commission money as much as possible. And this creates a legitimate problem
for you as a consumer. If you're trying to make an informed buying decision, being flooded with fake
reviews is probably the least that you would want. And in the past these fake reviews were less of a
problem because you could spot them from miles away. They used to be filmed in poor quality,
there was no voiceover or just a robotic voice and the information presented was generally boring.
But then something magical happened freelance websites like Fiverr. You could hire a
scriptwriter from Fiverr to write you a script for like $10 then a voiceover artist to read out loud
that script for like $8 and finally a video editor to edit all of that mess together for like $20.
That's why these fake reviews seem so well made but under the surface they only provide
outdated and misleading information. They hire a scriptwriter to write them a Hostinger review
but the people that write and edit they don't want to spend money out of their own pocket just
for a quick gig so they never buy the Hostinger plans. They just google around and piece together
all of the information they find for free from other reviews videos and simply stock footage.
Roughly $40 dollars spent and you could have a professional looking video on your channel
without having to do absolutely any work besides pressing that publish button.
But these fake reviewers are getting so absurd that they even started to save money
on script writers now by just copying other people's work word for word check this out:
Bluehost advertises monthly pricing but they do not offer any monthly plans.
Bluehost does advertise monthly pricing but does not actually offer any month-by-month plans.
Bluehost plans work extremely well with WordPress from the feature side of things.
Bluehost plans work extremely well with Wordpress from the features side of things. You get a free
website staging environment this allows you to create a copy of your website to test changes.
You get a free website staging environment this allows you to make a copy of your website just
to test changes. The sad reality is that in most cases the people who are behind these channels
have 1 never even used a web hosting service to begin with and 2 have no regards for you as
a buyer because to them you're just a product. A one-time interaction to get off commission money
and then just disappear. They just want to spend the least amount of money to make as
many videos as possible that's it. Quantity over quality basically they'll do anything that will
make you want to buy using their links they cash in they delete the channel or just leave it be and
they start over again with a new brand. That's why there are so many different channels popping up
with the same videos. Most web hosting companies have affiliate programs that anyone can sign up
for once you join an affiliate program you get a special link that leads to the original website
if people click that link and make a purchase the company knows you brought them a customer and
shares part of that money the customer spent with you. And affiliate marketing is not bad in itself,
there are plenty of people that rely on that income to create valuable content myself included.
However, it does create an opportunity for a lot of deception. Affiliate marketing is quite
a slippery slope to begin with. Because, people usually have a hard time trusting reviewers
when they know that the reviewer is making money off of his review. However, if you want
to make reviews full time and make them look professional you need to have some sort of an
income because for me personally I sometimes spend up to thousands of dollars and weeks of my time
buying, testing editing, scripting, filming. So, it wouldn't be possible without affiliate
commissions. But, as most things in the world it only boils down to one thing and one thing only:
why should you even care? Well, these fake reviews create a losing situation
for absolutely everyone except for the fake reviewer themselves 1. you and people like you
end up with web hosting services that they don't necessarily need or like and that the money that
you've spent ends up further fueling this scam deceiving more people in the future. That means
you'll need to go through a refund process later on or you'll have to battle with the
support team in order to figure out what's wrong. Because the service that was advertised to you
does not match reality also you might not look at other review sources because you believe you
have all of the necessary information already. When the information that you've been provided
with is simply incorrect or outdated 2. web hosting companies get misrepresented
and they get an insanely warped perspective of what it's like to work with YouTube personalities
most of the views on these fake review channels are completely botted. There are no comments,
no community and the web hosting company sees this and goes well if this guy gets
30 000 views and makes like 2 sales YouTube is worthless for us. Even if these fake reviewers go
through the trouble of buying comments they always look something like this: all review channels
start losing credibility because the viewers stop trusting us. They think that every single
reviewer is out to get them or to profit from them without creating any value to them as a buyer
the entire industry starts losing credibility this is exactly what happened to the written
review industry people realized that reviews are being faked and started looking for other sources
of information this is why people gravitated towards video reviews they were harder to fake
but not anymore as it seems. But you know how I do it on this channel everything that I talk about is
backed up by cold hard data and evidence and in this case I even have some prepared by digging
further into this topic I found what I believe to be the biggest bot channel network owned by the
same person or more likely an organization that specializes in creating fake reviews.
And, I just want to point out that while the industry might seem to be full of fake reviewers
it's actually just one group of people with tons of different channels that create this illusion.
I want for you to learn to spot these fakers and have a better experience shopping online these
channels are Geekman, The techroost, consumer research studios, cyberdog ,panda tech, techhouse,
site builder studios and tech site reviews. And, I'm sure there will be plenty more in the future
after all that's how they operate just a ton of channels that are slightly different. Let's simply
take a closer look at these channels because: clue #1 all of them basically use the exact same
thumbnails. Here is a thumbnail from site builder studios now from tech house now from panda tech,
consumer research studios and geekman. Yeah it's the same thumbnail. And none of these peoples
featured in the thumbnails ever appeared in the videos because these are just stock photos.
Remember these channels want to stay anonymous but appear as if they're real. Actually if I would
go to freepik.com and type in "surprised man" we can see where they're getting their images from.
Oh look here's a match and another one and another one you get a point. Clue #2 these channels are
usually faceless. That means they only use voice over or the same freelance actors over multiple
channels and this goes into the theme of anonymity since you're not really creating genuine content
you don't want to associate your own face and voice with it. They almost never showcase the
product they're reviewing it's always footage from the home page of the web hosting provider
and this makes sense because web hosting plans are expensive. I pay thousands of dollars every month
to have my plans up and running so these channels just fake it and faking it means you can't really
trust this information to make your purchases. Clue #4 the view like and comment ratio seems
way off. For example, look at this a Bluehost review from Pandatech 44 000 views 29 comments
that's around 20 times more than a realistic number that would be available for this topic.
But anyways this video is not made to start a witch hunt do not go onto the channels mentioned,
don't comment anything, don't view their videos. Because that way you will be playing
right into their hand. You'll give them what they want the most actual user interaction
because most of the views and comments on their videos are botted so real views and
real comments help them out a ton. This video is simply made to educate those who are looking
to make an informed buying decision by a person who's been in the industry for over 3 years now.
Yes, it does suck that these things do happen but they do happen and the best way you can
stop them is by simply cutting off their income. Don't watch their videos don't click on their
thumbnails and don't use their links within time they will be either forced to do real reviews
or simply disappear. For example, want some good information about VPNs? I recommend
TomSpark Reviews. In the market for web hosting? Well I do a lot of web hosting related stuff
and so does Darryl Wilson. Need to buy a website builder? Site builder report does excellent
videos. And remember always get your information from multiple sources don't take anything that
I say or other channels say as pure fact. If you get your information from multiple sources
you can make the logical conclusion yourself anyways stay vigilant. Remember that things
are not always what they seem seem, check your information and I'll see you in the next video!