An Integrated Text Analytics and Ensemble Machine Learning Framework for Fake Review Detection in Online Marketplaces

Abstract

The increasing prevalence of fake reviews on e-commerce platforms undermines consumer trust and affects purchasing decisions, particularly for local products by limited visibility such as those by West Sumatra, Indonesia. This study proposes a hybrid approach combining text analytics and machine learning to enhance the detection of fake reviews. Four classification models—Naive Bayes, Random Forest, Logistic Regression, and K-Nearest Neighbor—were tested on a dataset of 1,500 labeled product reviews. Among these models, Random Forest had the highest starting accuracy of 0.8533. To enhance it, we created a better algorithm called EKAHypeRFor (Enhanced Knowledge Augmentation of Hyperparameter Random Forest). This method uses simple feature engineering and careful tuning of settings by RandomizedSearchCV. The enhanced model reached an accuracy of 0.8778, which is 2.45% higher than the original. It also includes a real-time review sorting tool, making it easy to use on online shopping sites. Tests by a confusion matrix and feature importance drawn the model works well and is easy to understand. This method is simple, fast, and accurate, helping to make online product reviews more trustworthy for small and medium businesses in the area.