New Changes on Amazon Review Policy

Recently, many sellers have found that Amazon's front-end review policy has changed. The review no longer shows its specific quantity, only the rating and the percentage of 5-star reviews. Its quantity can only be seen after clicking "Reviews."

According to the investigation of a large cross-border e-commerce service provider, not all product reviews have changed, and there are several different ways to display the reviews. For example, the U.S. station still displays the star rating and the number of reviews. The Japanese station only displays the rating and one star, and the number of reviews and the percentage of each star are displayed when the mouse is moved to this star.

In addition, according to media reports, there are also other forms of display on Amazon; for example, display only one star and label the proportion of 4-star and above reviews; or only one star and label the number of reviews; or only one star and label the proportion of 5-star and above reviews.

The quantity and quality of Amazon reviews are related to the product's ranking in the search results, which affects the product's exposure and the conversion rate. Therefore, any change in “Reviews” will make the sensitive sellers nervous.

This rule change has also triggered a heated discussion among sellers. Some believe this act is breaking the review "moat" of the old product, providing more opportunities for new products. Some hold that this signals that sales will be given more attention. Combined with the previous changes to the sales display on Amazon, sellers may set off a new round of low-price spiral competition. Some sellers believe that this is forcing them to improve the quality of their products, but at the same time, they will lose some reference on product selection.

In the early times, a group of sellers accumulated many reviews through product testing and some unspeakable black technology. Although the product quality may be average, thousands of reviews in the foreground will bring sensory stimulation to consumers, which in turn induces more consumers to buy products with many reviews. The hiding of review numbers is to offset its effect so that the old and new products can have fair competition.

Amazon AI summary review tool appears.

In fact, this is not the first time that Amazon has made adjustments to ”Reviews”. On August 14, Amazon officially announced the launch of the product review summary function based on generative artificial intelligence, also known as AI summary review. It can recognize common review themes and provide a concise summary on the product detail page, focusing on product features and consumer usage feelings mentioned frequently in reviews.

Amazon launched this feature because some sellers still brush many reviews at the risk of being blocked to improve the listing weight. Such a phenomenon is repeatedly prohibited but continuously appears. Amazon simply uses AI to combat it easily. In this way, the meaningless review brushing will be "cleaned out of the game," leaving the actual value of the comments.

On the other hand, some listings have so many mixed and puzzling reviews that consumers can hardly extract helpful information. Such being the case, let AI generalize the main points to provide consumers with valuable reference. The bad reviews hidden in a large number of reviews in the past will be summarized and shown on top by AI so that the product's defects are also exposed to consumers.

If consumers want to know the utility of a product, they just need to click on the product attributes in the "Reviews," and then they can get the related reviews. By categorizing the product's different features, its strengths and weaknesses become extremely obvious. At the same time, Amazon says the feature will only help show credible reviews from verified purchases so consumers can get authentic and reliable content.

Amazon's own store exposed to blatant review solicitation

While it has stricter and stricter regulations on, Amazon knows the importance of Reviews. There have also been recent media reports that Amazon blatantly requests positive reviews of its own products.

In the "little card" made public by the media, the first line thanks consumers for purchasing Amazon-branded products, and then the second line pleads with consumers to leave a review. In the center of the card is a very conspicuous QR code. As long as the consumer scans the QR code to open "thankyou.amazon.com" and chooses an excellent site to log in to, he/she can comment on the product.

Although it only takes a neutral attitude to request consumers to provide reviews instead of attracting them with cashback, Amazon has also stipulated that the request for positive reviews can only be made through the platform message. At the same time, some sellers reported that once the message involves "review" or other sensitive words, sellers will be easily identified as a violation, and their accounts will be swept.

Sellers are outraged about it: on Amazon, once the sellers operate a little improperly, we may face severe penalties such as violation charges, high fines, and even store closure. However, Amazon's own operations always seem to be outside these rules. Such an apparent double standard undoubtedly makes sellers feel that Amazon's own products enjoy privileges and disobey the principle of fairness!