You don't need an in-depth study or 100-page analysis to tell you that people use reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. Just ask yourself, have you ever read a hotel review, restaurant recap or noticed the amount of "stars" next to certain establishments?

Everyone is looking for honest opinions and experiences from real people, devoid of motive. It's great for consumers and for a lot of online businesses. The problem arises when negative reviews get posted and businesses don't know what to do them.

The first thing to understand is that reviews are a necessary evil. From an SEO perspective, there's a good chance more people will go to a third party site to read a review of your restaurant, for example, before they go to your actual website.

"Again, it depends on the business. For example, if it's a travel-related search, such as a hotel search, you're going to see TripAdvisor results high up in most cases. How that differs, as far as which review sites predominate for any given search," said author Bill Tancer.

The key is to ensure there are positive reviews for real people. And to deal with the negative reviews in a way that they disappear.

Are you getting the online reviews you want? Are you having trouble with bad reviews and opinions? Get immediate reputation management from Thoughtwire. Make sure the algorithms see the right reviews to present to consumers.