A. Before booking a hotel in Exeter, most travellers check the reviews. Nearly seven in ten say online ratings influence their choices more than price, photographs or brand names. Reviews have become the shop window of the internet age. B. A single fake page, marketers admit, can swing bookings for a small guesthouse by double digits in a slow season. That influence has attracted fraudsters. Researchers who analysed thousands of reviews found that about two fifths showed signs of being written by paid authors: vague language, bursts of five-star ratings within a single day, and accounts that review fifty hotels in one week. C. Guesthouses with steady, mixed reviews, one owner estimates, survive a bad season far better than those with either perfect pages or none at all. Platforms say they delete millions of fake reviews a year, but critics call this an endless chase: as detection improves, paid writers simply slow down and imitate genuine customers more carefully. Buyers, meanwhile, have learned to trust the three-star review that lists specific problems far more than a page of perfect tens. D. Some platforms now badge long-term reviewers and show rating histories, small signals that raise the cost of running a fake account. The platforms' own analysts concede that detection will always run one step behind the writers it chases. Regulators are now stepping in, fining companies that host fakes. E. Whether that changes behaviour is unclear, but the direction is set: reviews are no longer gossip between strangers — they are commerce, and they will be policed like it. The questions for regulators are who is responsible and how quickly the rules can move.
选词填空：Researchers who analysed thousands of reviews found that about two fifths showed signs of being ______ by paid authors: vague language, bursts of five-star ratings within a single day, and accounts that review fifty hotels in one week.