I've been offered so many goodies for good reviews on everything from Amazon to restaurants that want good reviews on Yelp. Sometimes they will even offer you a coupon for a 5* review on a receipt.
That aside, why is it that people get to commit fraud and Google gets the blame?
It's both. The individuals themselves are to blame for the fraudulent reviews, and Google and other services are to blame for fostering environments that allow fraudulent reviews to be so prevalent.
Because Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, Amazon, etc. actually run the services, and they have the technology to validate it, but simply can't be bothered to get it right. So, they sell you allegedly good information, but deliver fraud.
From the examples in the article where the reviewers covered multiple businesses hundreds of miles apart like they were next to home, Google certainly has the location data to see if they were ever there, or for local businesses, knows who lives in range to be customers. Amazon and others have massive data on their users, and could apply a lot of AI tech to validate reviews for credibility, if they wanted to bother to do it right.
That aside, why is it that people get to commit fraud and Google gets the blame?