Between online shopping and advertising, reviews for products, goods, and services are everywhere.

There’s Google reviews, Facebook reviews, Amazon reviews and more. There are even sites dedicated to reviews like Yelp.

Are these reviews really helpful? They can be, but sometimes those reviews are fake.

Most think of those over the top, everything was perfect reviews being fake, there are plenty of those and some companies pay big money for them.

However, beware of those one-star reviews too. Often those come from someone who has a personal issue with the business and asks all of their friends and family to go give them a bad review. This certainly isn’t always the case, but it happens more than you might think.

A good rule to go by is to read the three-star reviews. They are rarely fake or hate-fueled and prove to be the most reliable and helpful. There’s also less of them so if you’re trying to sift through a mountain of reviews, only reading the three-star ones helps pare it down.

If you want to try to combat the plague of fake reviews, make sure you leave honest reviews where you can. Every little bit helps.