Haunted house ratings fraud here on Hauntworld

[Creepy Works]

Anyone ever have the skull ratings on their haunted house listing be manipulated?

I have a listing for Creepy Works haunted house in Arkansas and also a listing for haunted house of conway. They both point to the same haunt. I am slowly updating my name/logos more towards Creepy Works and didn't want to lose customers from the simpler name haunted house of conway. Transitioning so to speak.

About midnight on 2nd night opened I received lots of bad feedback on Creepy Works listing and no change on the other. 2nd weekend lots of bad feedback on the other listing with absolutely no change on Creepy Works. Whats surprised me is I can clear my cookies and go in and manipulate feedback over and over with impunity. Considering the low number of views and the amount of feedback I had to enter to artificially change the ratings it looks like some asshole screwing with the numbers a bit. They would also have to know both names are associated with a single haunt location.

Anything a person can do about this right off hand? A full listing of IP address logs would be a start. I know I ain't a 6. I don't expect to be a 10 either. I just hope for something that's fair.

[john haines]

remember, anytime you have to deal with the PAYING public, you're gonna have problems. it's just a natural. you can NEVER make everybody happy. (THAT'S A GIVEN)..... I HAD A DJ BUSINESS FOR 34 YEARS. THERE WERE 3 OTHER GUYS IN MY AREA. The constant bad mouthing, horrible talk, cutting someone's throat for 10 bucks on a price to get the gig was a daily occurance. Why can't we all just get along ? (that was MY motto). Don't let it bother you. bad news travels fast. good news travels faster, even in the haunted house business. Good luck handling this situation........... crap like this is always gonna happen (unfortunately)........

[HauntedMemphis]

remember, anytime you have to deal with the PAYING public, you're gonna have problems. it's just a natural. you can NEVER make everybody happy. (THAT'S A GIVEN)..... I HAD A DJ BUSINESS FOR 34 YEARS. THERE WERE 3 OTHER GUYS IN MY AREA. The constant bad mouthing, horrible talk, cutting someone's throat for 10 bucks on a price to get the gig was a daily occurance. Why can't we all just get along ? (that was MY motto). Don't let it bother you. bad news travels fast. good news travels faster, even in the haunted house business. Good luck handling this situation........... crap like this is always gonna happen (unfortunately)........

I wouldn't worry too much about ratings here anyway. Haven't done the analysis this year, but last year references from Hauntworld made up less than 1% of my site hits anyway. People weren't finding me through here. They found me through other methods.

[MovieRelics]

The best thing that you can do is just make sure that your haunt is listed in several different directories besides relying on one source. You wouldn't just advertise your haunt with one newspaper and nothing else. Same idea here. Be sure to check and update/add your haunt to directories specializing in your local area/region and national directories like Hauntworld, Findahaunt.com, HauntDB.com and HauntedHouse.com. As far as preventing rating manipulation, unless the server does multiple ways of preventing gaming, then there is really nothing you can do. As you noticed, if you clear cookies, you can manipulate a listing on some sites. With our listing ratings on HauntDB, we do a variety of ways to try to minimize gaming the best we can, but your never going to completely eliminate it. Once you figure out one way, someone who is really determined will all ways try to find a way around it and game the system. It's important to keep an eye on your profile and promote it with you fans and get them to vote on it! For every 1 negative comment, there are 10 positive that are not posting. Encourage the positive commenters to post on your profiles. That will help combat the negative reviews. It's like Harry Truman use to say, "How is it that only SOB's know how to lick a stamp?"

[Creepy Works]

I get about zero traffic from Hauntworld as I'm on the bottom of the totempole in listings. I'm not that messed up about it. I advertise in other ways to get the word out. Just surprised I got another jerkweed to fight off. OTOH I guess I ought to be glad to be considered a threat though

[MovieRelics]

Like I said, promote your haunt on Facebook, Twitter, and other social avenues and motivate your fans to visit the different directories that allow attraction ratings like on Hauntworld, HauntDB, etc and tell them to vote. The more positives you get, that will start to round out the negatives. If after that your still just getting negative ratings and votes, then you may have to take a hard look in the mirror.... lol

Hope you have a good season!