iTunes store and gamed reviews

There has been a lot said in the press recently about bad reviews – the NYT recently brought to the attention of Google that one company decormyeyes was actively encouraging bad reviews to gain search engine rankings.

Other sites have been accused of allowing poor reviews which may have a negative effect on their businesses and in fact tripadvisor is being sued over it.

Meanwhile over on the iTunes store they’ve had problems in the past and removed apps from a developer found to be abusing the ratings and review system. Still though it persists.

Does anyone else think it’s suspicious that Union17 manages to review one app ***** (5 star) and NOW TOTALLY RELIABLE! PERFECT!! and writing lots of overly positive (and also in caps with exclamation points) yet at the same time manages to review seven other similar apps all * (1 star) managing to slate them, promote the first app and it’s supposed features int he review and all within a couple of days…
Then there’s Type25 who clearly does work for the developer as any of their apps reviewed are great and any others are poor.

I reckon another developer seems to be trying to game the iTunes store review system which really means you can’t trust the reviews on there until they find a way of preventing developers reviewing on the site.