Nineteen companies have "agreed to cease their practice of writing fake online reviews for businesses and to pay more than $350,000 in penalties" after being caught posing as real consumers on sites such as Yelp, Google Local, and CitySearch, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced today.

The companies posted reviews on various sites while pretending to be real consumers, violating state laws against false advertising and deceptive business practices, the AG's office said. The alleged astroturfers spoofed IP addresses to hide their locations and make the reviews appear to come from multiple users.

In one case, a marketing company arranged for this review of a periodontist to be written on CitySearch:

Friendly and expert periodontist. Boy am I glad I discovered Dr. Tetri! I had noticed that my gums had been pretty inflamed lately and they were a bit swollen. At first I thought it was a temporary thing and made sure to floss and listerine, but then it didn't go away. So I did some research on good gum doctors in the city and stumbled across the practice of Tetri... best discovery ever.

The AG's office spent a year investigating the schemes, going undercover in the process, according to the announcement:

Posing as the owner of a yogurt shop in Brooklyn, representatives from Attorney General Schneiderman's office called the leading SEO [search engine optimization] companies in New York to request assistance in combating negative reviews on consumer-review websites. During these calls, representatives from some of these companies offered to write fake reviews of the yogurt shop and post them on consumer-review websites such as Yelp.com, Google Local, and Citysearch.com as part of their reputation management services. The investigation revealed that SEO companies were using advanced IP spoofing techniques to hide their identities as well as setting up hundreds of bogus online profiles on consumer review websites to post the reviews. The investigation found that many consumer-review websites have implemented filters to detect and filter or delete fake reviews, with Yelp's being the most aggressive.

Companies used their own employees to write and post reviews and "hired freelance writers from as far away as the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Eastern Europe for $1 to $10 per review." Companies sought reviewers by posting on sites such as Craigslist.com, Freelancer.com, and oDesk.com. One solicitation from an SEO company read as follows:

We need a person that can post multiple positive reviews on major REVIEW sites. Example: Google Maps, Yelp, CitySearch. Must be from different IP addresses… So you must be able to have multiple IPs. The reviews will be only few sentences long. Need to have some understanding on how Yelp filters works. Previous experience is a plus…just apply --)we are a marketing company.

In other cases, businesses that wanted fake online reviews hired reviewers directly instead of going through SEO companies, the AG said. An ad from a spa in New York City read, "I need someone who is a YELP expert to post positive reviews for a spa that will not be filtered using legitimate existing yelp accounts must have at least 10 friends on Yelp. Please be a yelp expert!! I will pay $10 per-review after three days they must meet the criteria above."

The manager of a Scores strip club "orchestrated an astroturfing campaign with the help of a freelance writer that resulted in 175 fake reviews of entertainers at the Scores adult club in New York City and an affiliated website, scoreslive.com, most of which were posted online," the AG announcement also said.

Each of the 19 companies signed assurances of discontinuation while agreeing to penalties anywhere from $2,500 to nearly $100,000. The companies are A&E Wig Fashions, Inc.; A.H. Dental P.C.; Body Laser Spa Inc.; The Block Group, LLC; Bread and Butter NY, LLC; Envision MT Corp.; iSEOiSEO; Medical Message Clinic and HerballYours.com; Metamorphosis Day Spa, Inc.; Outer Beauty, P.C.; Lite Touch Plastic Surgery, P.C.; Stillwater Media Group; Swan Media Group, Inc.; Scores Media Group; US Coachways Limousine, Inc.; Utilities International, Inc.; The Web Empire; Webtools, LLC; West Village Teeth Whitening Service, LLC; XVIO, Inc.; and Zamdel, Inc.

Unfortunately, astroturfing isn't likely to go away, making it difficult for consumers to distinguish real reviews from fake ones. The AG's office cited Gartner research predicting that "by 2014, between 10 percent and 15 percent of social media reviews will be fake."