Paying for 5 star Ratings spam email

Soooo… I got a spam email from one Francis Baptiste saying that AppRatingsPlus.com could provide me with up to 150 (5 star) ratings on WordHero.

WordHero’s current ratings are:
62% of ratings are for 5 stars 24,109
29% of ratings are for 4 stars 11,401
6% of ratings are for 3 stars 2,186
1% of ratings are for 2 stars 438
2% of ratings are for 1 stars 608

So, if we multiple each number by the number of stars, then add them up and divide by the total ratings we get the Google Average (actually, we should multiple and divide by 5 somewhere in there, but I simplified the math). Anyway, we get 4.496 as the rating. Which explains why Google Play shows WordHero as 4.50.

So lets add 150 (5 star) ratings… now the new total is 4.4981 … HOLY SHIT BATMAN!!! You just managed to improve the rating by 0.043 PERCENT !!!

Seriously… these gentlemen need to learn to pick their targets better.

I have been getting mails from home from quite some time now. When I asked about google sniffing the same and disabling my account, no reply…

hey guys, im back from us

to be honest I am wondering why he doesnt offer it for your anagram hero.

e.g. for me it would make sense. I got 420 rating and a lot of haters so mu rating could go up to 4.8 which would result in having 5 and not 4.5 stars.

so mind, just doing the math(s), you need to buy 10k 5* ratings to move wordhero from a 4.5 to a 4.6! fawking hell.

Or a competitor could buy 6500 1* to move you to a 4.0

i think this is the first time i’ve used algebra since i left school!

MATH IS FUN!!! If you REALLY want to have fun, work out how many 1 star ratings would be required to drop Angry Birds below 4.0…

Good one georgiecasey!

It looks like these review-sellers have begun to tender up prospective customers by leaving bad ratings just before they email their offer to buy good ratings. I got 5 ratings, two 4-star, one 3-star, one 2-star and one 1-star over the course of a few hours (my app rarely gets ratings) and then around the same time an email arrived from [email protected] offering to sell ratings or reviews.

These five poor or semi-poor ratings vanished a few hours later, either because androidadvertise removed them or because Google Play detected it automatically and removed them.

In any case I think it’s just a matter of time before Google catches on and punishes people who pay for ratings or reviews. It might make economic sense, if not ethical, to pay for ratings if your app is a novelty app that’s only going to be making money for a short period of time anyway, but for long-term serious apps the risk of being banned is just not worth it.

I guess the scammers are getting slightly smarter over time, but not smart enough. :slight_smile: