G2.com is a review site that focuses on publishing user reviews for business software. It’s pretty much more or less similar to Capterra, Gartner, SourceForge and a dozen others. Much like Capterra, they’ve obviously got an incentivized review program, where they pay users to post reviews about the software listed on their site. With Capterra I’ve worked before, by publishing reviews for the software I use, and they’ve always sent the gift cards promptly without any issues. Furthermore, Capterra doesn’t even require proof of use firsthand, only if they have some doubts.
So, when I received this email from G2.com promising $15 for each posted review, I said why not? Here’s their original email:
As we near the end of the fiscal year here at G2 we can’t help but feel thankful – thankful for our 5M monthly active buyers, and for all those who contribute to our community by leaving authentic reviews. Together we are building something special – the world’s largest software marketplace.
So as a thanks from us at G2 we’re offering you all a chance to earn a $15 gift card for every software review you leave from our specially-curated list.
This offer is live for a limited time only, so act fast to take advantage – hit the button below to get started ↓
Review for $15→
If any friends or colleagues want to contribute by leaving a review, simply forward this email to them and they can earn $15 for each of their reviews, too!
That sounds excellent, doesn’t it? You get a $15/gift card for each review posted on their site? Well, down below, in small letters, were the restrictions:
Expires 02-06-2024. Limit 5 rewards per offer. Rewards will be delivered in 7 business days, pending review approval. Some international recipients may receive a Virtual Visa card or Mastercard in lieu of the gift card offered.
So the offer is only valid for a few more days, and there’s a limit of 5 rewards you can get. Also, you don’t get to review just any software on G2.com, but only apps from a particular list of apps they provided. And on that list there were basically only apps that were never reviewed on their platform, most of them quite unknown to me.
So I spent quite some time to try and find 5 apps that I use and posted a review for them with every bit of information they required (about 4 different steps). I’ve submitted all reviews, and got a mention that they’ll have to verify the reviews and approve them in 3 business days. However, after spending quite a lot of time writing the reviews based on my experience with the apps I was using, I received 5 different rejection messages from the G2.com reviewing team that basically said this:
Thank you for writing a review of Iconify AI.
Our moderation team was unable to approve your review because we could not verify your firsthand professional use of Iconify AI. You can edit your review to provide more information on how you’re using it in a place of work here.
If you haven’t already, providing a logged-in screenshot that contains identifying company information will make it easier for our team to validate your software review. If you’re reviewing a service provider, we recommend adding more detail about the work completed. We are unable to accept reviews of trial use of software.
This was just one of the 5 rejection messages that I received practically simultaneously. All of them had the same content, so I thought pretty much that’s an automated rejection process based on some triggers. So I said I’ll provide them proof, because I truly am a user of the 5 apps I reviewed. So I took screenshots of me being logged into the accounts of the web apps I reviewed. For Iconify AI however, I did even better. You see, that’s a paid service where you buy credits and then use them to generate app icons.
So I sent them a screenshot that shows the invoice I received when purchasing the credits for Iconify AI. I thought that’s pretty much the best thing you could do to prove that you are professionally using a web app. However, to my surprise even after sending the proofs, I received another set of 5 rejection messages for my reviews. You know what’s lubricous about the rejection messages they sent? Aside the fact that they were all automated (again), these messages were basically saying that I work for the competition for that particular web app reviewed.
The funniest thing is that all apps I picked were in different fields, so somehow G2.com decided that I work in 3 different fields at once, for competitors of the apps I reviewed. Here’s such a fun rejection message I received:
Hi,
Thank you for writing a review of Iconify AI.
Our moderation team was unable to approve your review because it appears you work for a competitor of Iconify AI. To ensure we maintain an unbiased review site, we’re currently removing all reviews submitted by competitors of the reviewed product or service.
Thanks for understanding!
I honestly couldn’t believe it. What bothers me most it’s not the fact that I’ve wasted time sending in the reviews, but the fact that they’re basically saying something that’s not true and the fact that you can’t even send them a reply and talk to a human. I tried replying to their email, however I got an automated bounce back and that was it.
So, what do you think my opinion on G2.com’s incentivized reviews is? Are they fake or not? Thing is, G2.com is a large company, so I know they’re not scamming reviewers, however I do believe that they have some automated processes in place to reject reviews based on some biased elements. As long as they don’t provide real reasons and you cannot discuss with someone on why reviews are rejected, it is the last time I’m publishing a review on G2.com or visiting the site. I just wrote this as a sort of warning to other reviewers, at least try sending only 1 review and see if that gets approved before sending more.
