Consumers want to determine whether a company's reputation is good or bad, and often make comprehensive judgments based on search results, user reviews, and some articles and information in the massive information of the Internet. However, as everyone knows, some information that seems to be trustworthy is secretly manipulated by people.
Inmax, an Internet technology company that provides word-of-mouth services for enterprises, claims to create a closed-loop private domain traffic pool of brand, search and word-of-mouth for enterprises, serving 120 listed companies, 560 industry leaders and medium and large enterprises.
Yan Manager of Inmax Shanghai Branch told reporters that many of the questions and answers that netizens saw when seeking help in Q&A, encyclopedia, forums, etc., were made by word-of-mouth companies like them pretending to be real users.
Manager Yan of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: We will write you a question and an answer.
Reporter: Just write your own answers, right?
Manager Yan of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: This is basically the case now.
Manager Yan took out the questions and answers, questions and answers on the meta-universe concept products that had just been done for a certain enterprise, and they were all prepared in advance.
Three sets of questions and answers about meta-universe investment, one of which was asked about meta-universe virtual real estate investment, the content of the answer said that investment in virtual real estate is in full swing, and said that he invested in virtual real estate on a company platform.
Reporter: From the perspective of a third party, I told him that investing in this thing can make money, and there is such an expectation.
Manager Yan of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes, yes.
Reporter: But whether we can make money or not, in fact, we don't know.
Manager Yan of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes, the boss himself does not know.
The business manager stressed that impersonating a real user to ask and answer questions and answers must not use the same account.
Manager Yan of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Every content we send, it is impossible to send the same account, is that not the iron "humble" (fool)? That is to say, you are really a fool, and you don't know how to change your name.
The reporter then visited a number of word-of-mouth marketing companies and found that impersonating real users to ask questions and answers has become an important means for word-of-mouth marketing companies to attract business.
Reporter: Is this question and answer true? For example, you ask a question and wait for someone to answer it truthfully.
Manager Wang of Shanghai Zhendao Network Technology Co., Ltd.: No, you don't need to wait for anyone, that is, you ask your own questions and answer, and then the above will show that the customer answers.
Reporter: What is displayed?
Manager Wang of Shanghai Zhendao Network Technology Co., Ltd.: Because we have a lot of virtual accounts.
Manager Wang of Shanghai Niutui Information Technology Co., Ltd.: This is what we did in advance, we have different accounts, our company has different accounts, there are many accounts.
In order to make these self-questions and answers rank ahead of the search results, some word-of-mouth marketing companies even do not hesitate to hire water troops.
The person in charge of the Shanghai office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: We use the suren number, that is, we use the third person of ordinary people, and our company has a group of water troops.
Reporter: How much does the water army form do this question and answer?
The person in charge of the Shanghai office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: There are still more people doing this, which is actually a common disease in the industry.
Reporter: This question and answer are all us.
Marketing Director of Shanghai Office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: We are all here to do it.
Reporter: 3,775 likes.
Marketing Director of Shanghai Office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes, that is, a number of likes from people who watch it.
Reporter: Is it still dependent on cooperative resources, or the water army to do this amount of praise?
Marketing Director of Shanghai Office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: These are the unspoken rules of the industry.
In addition to hiring water soldiers to pretend to be real users to ask and answer themselves to mislead netizens, word-of-mouth marketing companies also have a technology to mislead netizens' search results, called "ten thousand words to dominate the screen".
The person in charge of Shanghai Niutui Information Technology Co., Ltd.: It is a thing called Baping.
Reporter: Just these 10,000 words can be ranked first.
Person in charge of Shanghai Niutui Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes.
The system backstage reporter of Shanghai Dingshang Company saw that they did a million words for an international school.
Reporter: How many keywords does it do?
Sales manager of Shanghai Dingshang Information Technology Co., Ltd.: more than 150,000.
Reporter: When users search for these 150,000 keywords on the Internet, they will all be ranked first?
Sales Manager of Shanghai Dingshang Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes.
Reporter: Search brand campus, reliable primary school, reliable campus, it is ranked in the corresponding ranking, right?
I don't know where netizens know that when they search for keywords such as nearby reliable schools, the search results are actually influenced by word-of-mouth companies.
This is Tianjin Qihang Company for a weight loss product to do a million words to dominate the screen, when the user search for "a weight loss belt is reliable" and other keywords, the product can be ranked in front of the search results.
Sales Manager of Tianjin Qihang Network Technology Co., Ltd.: You can show us more than one of these 15.
Reporter: The weight loss belt, do you want to provide some proof?
Sales Manager of Tianjin Qihang Network Technology Co., Ltd.: No need to provide proof.
Originally, the 10,000-word hegemony screen is that the word-of-mouth marketing company sets tens of thousands of massive keywords, so that users can always be in front of the promoted company when searching.
In order to use the 10,000 words to dominate the search results, word-of-mouth marketing companies sometimes use robots to crawl content online, piece together, and automatically generate tens of thousands of articles containing the set keywords, and the number is staggering.
The person in charge of Shanghai Niutui Information Technology Co., Ltd.: It is called grabbing content, it will grab three articles or five articles, then these five articles, this take the head, this take the middle, this take the tail, and then spelled together, it should actually be called pseudo-original, so there will often be a situation where the words are not up to the mark.
This article automatically grabbed and generated by the system robot of Tianjin Qihang Company, and the title was "Is a functional belt product reliable?" "The content of the article is obviously a patchwork, and even introduces the aluminum alloy technology in the middle."
Reporter: The spraying of the aluminum alloy surface plus the countermeasures of construction, this is written by the robot, right?
Sales Manager of Tianjin Qihang Cloud Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes, this is written by the robot.
Reporter: As long as the user searches for "Is this functional belt product reliable?" ", we put this site in the front, can search this site.
Business Manager of Tianjin Qihang Cloud Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes.
In order to influence the search results and mislead netizens, a large amount of spam information makes it difficult for netizens to determine whether it is true or false.
The reporter learned that in order to purify the network environment, since 2018, the relevant state departments have been carrying out "clean network action" and "clear action", of which illegal deletion of posts and black public relations are the key rectification objects.
However, under the heavy rectification, some word-of-mouth marketing companies are still secretly doing some shady businesses.
For some platforms to publish critical reports, user complaints, etc., word-of-mouth marketing companies will use technical means to directly display the web page as a 404 page that cannot find content.
Manager Qin of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd. Shanghai Office: We search for news normally, but after technical processing, it actually appears as a 404 page.
Reporter: 404 pages?
Manager Qin of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd. Shanghai Office: Yes, it actually exists by itself, but we have made 404 shields for it.
The business manager of Inmax deliberately showed the public opinion purification contract they signed with a certain enterprise, and the work summary after completing the contract showed that Inmax did a 404 treatment of many negative news involving the company's arrears of wages.
Reporter: How to make a 404?
Manager Yan of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: It is through some technical means.
In addition to the 404 processing, for some posts containing negative information, Inmax can also directly tamper with the title, this post titled "What kind of company do you think a company is", which was tampered with by Inmax to "what kind of company is a good company".
General Manager of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: For example, if it was originally some negative comments, it may have been revised in the title of its comment.
For some negative news, Ke Yuyun also has a more direct means, that is, to delete it cleanly.
Marketing Director of Shanghai Office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: There are some words that we can't recognize when we go out of this door. In this way, there are many things that cannot be brought to the table and said, and we can also tell you that if we can directly kill it, we will directly kill it.
Reporter: What you mean by drying out is deleting, right?
Marketing Director, Shanghai Office, Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Yes.
Impersonating real users to ask questions and answers, swaying search results, tampering with titles, 404 processing, to direct deletion, word-of-mouth companies charge from thousands of yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan.
Manager Qin of Shanghai Office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: It may cost about 30,000 yuan and more than 40,000 yuan.
General Manager of Shanghai Branch of Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: There may be tens of thousands of yuan, if you say that you do a better job, you may get 200,000 or 300,000 yuan.
Where do users know that some important information on the Internet has been distorted, tampered with, and disappeared under the manipulation of some word-of-mouth marketing companies.
And word-of-mouth marketing companies also understand that these are unsightly businesses.
Channel Manager of Shenzhen Inmax Information Technology Co., Ltd.: Can't mention deletion, you know? Don't talk to the client about this deletion, even if we can help him deal with it, you can only tell the client, do PR processing.
Manager Qin of the Shanghai office of Sichuan Keyuyun Information Technology Co., Ltd.: You can't say it directly to the customer, if you say it to the customer, say that we use some way to delete your post through technical deletion, if the customer once you go to report, then you will suffer immediately.
Source CCTV Finance
Edited by Zhao Siyao
Process Editor Tai Shaofeng