Glassdoor, the website where employees post reviews of employers, can be a major liability for a company. Disgruntled workers can anonymously slime their former workplaces, damaging the company's reputation and making it harder to recruit talent.

It's no wonder then that some employers have tried to boost their rating on Glassdoor by getting sympathetic workers to post positive reviews.

The Wall Street Journal recently undertook an investigation of millions of anonymous reviews on the website. The investigation revealed patterns that suggested concerted efforts by companies to flood the website with flattering reviews of their compensation and culture.

More than 400 companies saw their ratings skyrocket in response to a sudden surge of positive reviews in a single month.

Overall, the percentage of reviews that gave an employer a five-star rating has steadily increased in recent years. At the beginning of 2013, only 17 percent of reviews awarded an employer the top rating. That rose to 20 percent in 2015, 24 percent in 2017 and 28 percent at the end of last year.

One obvious effort to boost ratings came from Guaranteed Rate, the mortgage lender. In an email, the company told employees they had a “collective responsibility” to enhance the company's reputation on Glassdoor, encouraging them to post positive reviews. In September, the company received over 200 positive reviews, compared to only 20 during the first eight months of the year.

SpaceX, the space exploration company led by Elon Musk, has also encouraged workers to laud the company on Glassdoor. A company recruiter even touted her efforts to boost the company's rating on her Linkedin profile.

In a tight labor market, where talent is hard to come by, employers are particularly sensitive to their online reputation, Andy Challenger, vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, tells the Journal.

“Glassdoor is the most dominant company reviews website by far,” says Challenger.

Employees from a number of companies told the Journal about being encouraged or pressured to give their employers good reviews online.

The trends threaten to undermine Glassdoor's credibility as a source for accurate information. Glassdoor has suggested that manipulation by employers is not the only reason a company may experience an uptick in positive reviews. That can also correspond with a hiring surge, for instance.

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Companies fudging Glassdoor ratings to win talent

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