Come on. We’ve all been tempted to review our own products – very positively of course! Surely everyone does it? Rememer a few years ago when Amazon had a glitch on their site revealing reviewers real names and there were numerous glowing reviews written by the authors? Hardly surprising.

However, the FTC seems to be cracking down on this.

This article on the risks of user generated reviews talks about such problems:

Between November 2008 and May 2009, Reverb staff posted reviews about clients’ games in a manner that, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), gave the impression the comments “were written by disinterested customers.”  Reverb failed to disclose that it was hired to promote the games and often received a percentage of sales.

So be careful about reviewing your own products!

FYI, I screen all the reviews on this site for reviews written by someone at the company. I won’t disclose the methods I use as that would help the culprits circumvent them, but let’s just say I have blocked more than one review left by the company which makes the software. Maybe I should just report them to the FTC instead….