Reviewing Arctic Silver 5 Products For Signs of Astroturfing

What is Astroturfing?

Many companies astroturf to sell end user products with SEO (search Engine Optimization techniques to get their company and product on page one of Google and other search engines.

How do Companies Astroturf?

Some businesses use special tools such as ‘Xrumer,’ which allows a company to target multiple forums and spam networks to make it appear as though a lot of people share the same positive opinion about a product when in reality it is just one person or contracted company staff.

What Motivates a Company to Astroturf?

When you're trying to figure out what might motivate a company to employ astroturfing as an online marketing strategy, consider the following potential motivations:


Hiding The Truth About Poorly Performing Products

Selling More Products To New Product Users Who Can't Tell The Difference Between Product Hype and Truth.

• To Secure Page 1 Ranking in Popular Search Engines Such as Google. 
• To Hide A Lack of Real, Positive Consumer Reviews. 
• To Hide Negative Reviews.
• To Disguise or Hide a High Cost Ratio.

Let us examine this issue one point at a time.

The first point would be a poor performing product when compared to similar items within the market. Below is a graphic of a recent comparison of the performance of ‘Arctic Silver 5’ when compared to other products.

Please note: Lower temperature relates to better performance.

Please note: Lower temperatures release to better performance.

As of June 3rd 2015 7 out of 8 reviews featured on Arctic Silver’s main page are are over a decade old.

Finally we have the cost ratio (as shown below) we can deduce that Arctic Silver 5 has one of the highest costs per ML (Millilitre) ratio with the exception of perhaps the liquid metals.

When a product has low performance when compared to others of a similar type, Astroturfing can help hide the facts from online consumers.

When a product has low performance when compared to other products of a similar type, astroturfing can help hide the facts from online consumers.

In light of the graphic, it appears AS5 may have the highest cost per Ml ratio on the market. Does astroturfing hide this matter from consumers? Perhaps.

Would a company with higher cost still manage to sell their products without the benefits gained from astroturfing?

Is this the precise motivation for the company used in this example to turn to astroturfing? I don't know if my opinion here is 100% accurate. Have I missed another possible motive for the astroturf? What do you think? I'd love to hear your opinion so that my own is an accurate one.


I do know that Astroturfing on varying forums and elsewhere on the Internet gives consumers the impression that a product is well liked by many users, but in reality, only one single person or company may be

“spamming” forums and elsewhere in order to ‘fool’ people into thinking that the product is highly recommended when in reality it is not.

It is as simple as 2+2+2+2=8

Do you agree?

Poor product + Evidence of SEO manipulation + Few good reviews/recommendations in recent years + High actual cost are pretty good indicators to me that Astroturfing may be taking place in the review of the evidence I've explored thus far.

In summary, companies frequently tend to astroturf when no one actually recommends the product in a real-life reviews and yet the company's goal is to sell more products and attract the attention of potential buyers on the Internet.

Share what you think of the opinions I've expressed in this astroturfing review/study in the comment section.

edited 08/06/2015

Henry Stewart