Microsoft Cleans Up Windows Store Spam

Anyone who’s ever spent some serious time looking through the Windows Store will have noticed one issue with it in particular:

That issue of the useless spam ridden reviews that hinder us all when trying to decide if an app or program is actually any good. 

You’d think that Microsoft’s own Windows Store might be one of the better policed sites, but despite having taken some steps in recent months, the problem of made up and spam laden reviews that have nothing to do with the product in question is well known for the frustrations it causes.

While this isn’t such a big issue for anyone wanting to install something like Facebook or Office 365, it can be a real issue for people when they try to find an app off the beaten path.

New Direction

But in a new move to improve the situation Microsoft has now decided to make it easier for developers themselves to report these irrelevant user reviews.

Microsoft have reacted in the past to the problem inherent with allowing users to leave reviews, but the speed with which they have tried to resolve issues has been somewhat lacking to say the least.

Last year, Microsoft gave app developers the ability to reply to reviews. The move was welcomed by the developer community and by genuine users, but it did not directly address the problem with spam reviews.

Previous Attempts

It was only a few short months ago, that Microsoft cleaned up the Windows Store enforcing new policies to try and reduce the number of low quality and broken apps before the Windows 10 launch. Previous to that, the company culled 1500 poor quality apps from the store as well to try and reduce the amount of low-quality and misleading apps taking up shelf space.

Different Approaches, Same Hopes

Now however, developers can highlight questionable feedback directly to the Windows Store support team, where Microsoft itself can decide whether suspect reviews violate Microsoft policies.

But this isn’t all Microsoft are doing to address the spam issue. They have also added a new anti-spam technology feature to the Windows Store.  Microsoft are confident that it will detect and delete large swathes of the spam content resident in app reviews.

Assuming both these new features taken at face value work, Windows Store users should start to see a difference very quickly. And maybe just maybe, reviews left on the Windows Store site might just become trustworthy and relevant.

Time will tell.