Amazon Product Reviews: Testing New Star System, AI Summaries

Change remains the only constant on Amazon, and the latest updates from the tech giant’s marketplace aim to improve the Amazon product review experience. Currently the buzz in the Amazon seller community revolves around Amazon product reviews, which are at the heart of discussions due to recent changes that impact how customer reviews are showcased and created. These updates are affecting sellers and customers alike.

Keep reading as we discuss a few major headlines in the Amazon landscape, directly related to Amazon product reviews. You won’t want to miss this.

Amazon’s New Star Rating Display

In late August, customers began to notice the Amazon search results page started looking a little different. Instead of the traditional five-star rating system that displays a product’s weighted average by coloring the stars in yellow to match the review count, a single star fully shaded in yellow with a number presented before the star took its place.

As one Redditor points out, Amazon appears to be testing out that space left open by displaying the percentage of five-star ratings. At this moment, these displays seem dependent on the browser and product category.

To this point, sentiment regarding Amazon’s new star ratings display seems less than favorable.

While the new display doesn’t change the review rating a customer would see, the visual doesn’t jump off the page like the traditional display. As a result, shoppers who prioritize by review ratings must be more diligent in spotting poorly-rated products. For example, a 2-star product with three unshaded boxes is easily noticeable and its lack of quality reviews becomes conspicuous, while the update makes each product appear more uniform.

Perhaps the change will grow on shoppers as it becomes more familiar, but at the moment the change appears to be rating 1.0 ⭐ with consumers.

Introduction of AI-Generated Customer Review Highlights

As artificial intelligence continues to gain momentum and impact industries, it should come as no surprise that Amazon would be near the forefront of utilizing and deploying the technology. In recent weeks, Amazon shoppers on mobile began seeing AI-generated customer review highlights below the customer reviews header summarizing customer reviews. This brand-new feature adds importance to reviews beyond the star review system, emphasizing what customers write about a product is more important than the subjective star rating they leave for a product.

Like how the average customer review star system combines the average review rating to offer a general idea of customer satisfaction, the AI-generated review highlights allow customers to see common themes and comments without sifting through each review. While customers might still opt to read reviews, the AI-generated highlights serve as a valuable source of information that gives shoppers an idea of what to look for when perusing reviews for potential issues or validation before purchasing.

Amazon sellers will undoubtedly want to monitor these AI-generated review highlights. A wave of negative reviews citing critical details about a product can nosedive sales more than ever, even for products with a rich sales history. Conversely, accumulating positive reviews becomes even more valuable as the Amazon product review highlights recap what customers say about a given product.

Amazon states the new AI-generated review highlights only include customer reviews from verified purchases, filtering out reviews from customers who purchased the product off Amazon or at a steep discount. This measure keeps low-value, potentially skewed customer reviews from impacting the AI-generated review summaries.

Continuing the Never-Ending Fight Against Fraudulent Reviews

Speaking of fraudulent reviews, Amazon continued the battle to protect the marketplace from counterfeit customer reviews by filing two new lawsuits against fake review brokers. The two new lawsuits tack on to the four lawsuits filed by Amazon in late June targeting fraudulent reviews.

“Our goal is to ensure that every review in Amazon’s stores is trustworthy and reflects customers’ actual experiences. Amazon welcomes authentic reviews—whether positive or negative —but strictly prohibits fake reviews that intentionally mislead customers.”

David Montague, Amazon Vice President of Selling Partner Risk

The two new lawsuits tack on to the four lawsuits filed by Amazon in late June targeting fraudulent reviews.

Of course, Amazon is not the only one playing defense against fraudulent reviews. In this calendar year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken a tough approach against the practice by making The Bountiful Company pay back $600,000 to customers for deceiving customers via manipulative review practices. The ruling set a precedent as the first law enforcement challenging “review hijacking,” in which a marketer steals or repurposes reviews of another product.

On top of the landmark punishment, the FTC also proposed a rule on July 31st aimed at the fake review industry that would carry up to a $50,000 fine per fraudulent review for businesses looking to scam their way to the top of search, enhance their product listing with Amazon badges, or deceive customer through false representations.

The heavy-handed penalties, the threat of lawsuits from one of the largest companies in the world, and the preventative measures taken by Amazon seek to bring the fake review industry to its knees.

Conclusion

Amazon product reviews have been the cornerstone of the platform, fostering trust and quality assurance since 1995. With many products from third-party brands on the marketplace, authentic customer reviews are vital to consumer trust.

For Amazon sellers, the message is clear: always stay within Amazon’s guidelines when boosting reviews. While a cascade of 5-star reviews sounds alluring, the risk of being suspended or banned from Amazon, getting a listing suppressed, or being financially punished after the fact creates the risk of permanently ending your online business.

Amazon reviews are here to stay, and the introduction of AI-generated highlights, new rating displays, and a stringent stance against fake reviews reflect Amazon’s dedication to enhancing the review experience.

With all this information in mind, sellers would be wise to optimize their review generation strategy with Review Automation, the most effective Amazon-approved review generation strategy. Compliant with Amazon’s terms of service and up to 5 times more effective than traditional email follow-ups, Review Automation gets Amazon to request reviews on your behalf to customers who qualify for verified reviews. Get started today to streamline your review strategy without putting your business at risk.

Amazon Early Reviewer Program: Coming to an End?

The Amazon Early Reviewer Program, a popular way for sellers to earn their first five reviews, is entering its final days.

Effective immediately, enrollments in the Amazon Early Reviewer Program are no longer being accepted. Amazon confirms the discontinuation of the program within the Early Reviewer Program FAQs.

The Amazon Early Review Program proved to be a reliable, trustworthy way to generate authentic reviews by incentivizing customers to leave a review.

In 2016, Amazon updated its policy on reviews in response to a significant uptick in fake reviews. As a result, review generation became difficult, especially for new products entering the marketplace. In response, Amazon created the Early Reviewer Program to provide an option for new sellers to generate their first five reviews, with customers receiving small gift cards once they’ve left a review for a purchased product.

Amazon continuously innovates to improve the shopping and selling experience. Over the past several years, we have made numerous improvements to encourage purchasers to review products on Amazon. These initiatives, such as One Tap Reviews and Global Review Sharing have proven more effective in generating reviews than the Early Reviewer Program. Accordingly, as of March 10, 2021, we will no longer allow new enrollments in the Early Reviewer Program, and will stop offering the service to sellers currently enrolled in the program on April 25, 2021.

Amazon’s statement on the discontinuation of the Early Reviewer Program

Sellers looking to use the service are being notified via email that new enrollments are no longer being accepted. Enrolled sellers actively in the program have been notified of what this means for their business. The official message from Amazon can be seen below.

At the moment, it remains to be seen what the company has in store for future review generation. Just as the program was born in response to internal changes and seller response, there may be further changes to follow.

[YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN: Amazon’s Early Reviewer Program: What It Was & How It Worked]

An example of Amazon’s review generation efforts.

In an attempt to garner more trustworthy reviews, Amazon has increased efforts to amass reviews. As the company referenced in its statement, you’ve likely encountered more opportunities to leave reviews for your past purchases. Whether through pop-ups, emails or, native widgets, Amazon has taken on a more hands-on approach to reviews than in the past. As a result, less control over review generation has been in sellers’ hands.

New sellers looking to drive their first reviews may be tempted to circumvent Amazon’s terms of service. However, sellers who do so open themselves to account restrictions, suspensions, or even bans for violation of terms of service.

While review generation becomes increasingly difficult for new sellers with the removal of the Early Reviewer Program, options to assist your efforts do exist.

With the Request A Review Automation tool within the Market Intelligence Chrome extension, sellers can maximize their review generation efforts. And yes, it’s entirely compliant with Amazon’s terms of service.

The importance of review quantity and quality can’t be understated when it comes to selling on Amazon. By generating social proof of the quality of your products from past purchases, you’re much more inclined to experience more sales in the future.

Did you use the Amazon Early Reviewer Program? How do you feel about the service’s discontinuation? Drop a comment below to let us know!

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Amazon Review Request Tool: Build Trust & Boost Sales

Email Follow-Ups. Are. Dead. 

     As an Amazon seller you know first-hand how difficult getting product reviews can be; as well as how important they are to the success of your product. With the ever-changing rules for email follow-ups, Viral Launch offers a solution: our Amazon review request tool!

Reviews are the social proof that many shoppers ultimately base their purchasing decisions on. With feedback being so vital to a product’s performance, some sellers even resort to less-than-legitimate ways of generating reviews such crafty email follow-ups that contain manipulative messaging. Sellers may offer a free product in exchange for an “honest review” and some may even go so far as to buy product reviews through a third-party (these practices are against Amazon Terms of Service and could result in account suspension.) 

   Of course, not all sellers are violating ToS with email follow-ups that use these kinds of black-hat tactics. In the past, a legitimate email follow-up was arguably the best way to get real reviews from your customers. However, the rules around the type of language that is appropriate for email follow-ups changes frequently and staying on top of the current allowed verbiage is very difficult. Luckily, in Q4 of 2019, Amazon quietly released a feature within Seller Central that is disrupting this outdated method and offering much better results. Not to mention, this practice is 100% Amazon-sanctioned! 

Amazon’s ‘Request a Review’ button

     As some of you may have noticed, there is a new button located on your Order Details page within the Seller Central dashboard. You can find this by navigating to a completed order, clicking on “order details,” and then in the upper right-hand corner should be a button labeled “request a review.” This button will send an email, from Amazon, requesting feedback. See figure below. 

Once this button is pressed, Amazon will prompt you with a few notifications as they send an email to the customer requesting a product review. The messaging is simple and straightforward allowing for quick feedback from the customer. The email customers receive allows them to simply leave a star rating (a 1-5 star rating with no written review) which greatly increases the likelihood of product feedback. 

Reviews can only be requested on orders that are completed and can also only be requested once. This limits the amount of messages customers are receiving and prevents sellers from abusing this feature by spamming past buyers with emails. Shown to the right is an example of a product review email a customer might receive. 

VL’s programmatic solution to requesting reviews

      Since the “request a review” button is found within the orders details of each individual purchase, even medium-sized sellers would need to navigate hundreds of unique pages in order to request reviews for daily purchases. However, Viral Launch has automated this process with the release of Review Automation; an Amazon review request tool. As an add-on to the Market Intelligence chrome extension, VL subscribers will have the functionality of requesting reviews for all eligible orders with just a few clicks!

The first step is to grant permissions in order for the extension to function properly. From the “Manage Orders” page in Seller Central, click on the extension icon and follow the prompt to grant permissions. From there, you can begin requesting reviews in bulk for all of your eligible orders!

Click “request reviews” to have Amazon reach out to your customers on your behalf and request product feedback. Then just sit back and watch the reviews and ratings start flooding in! With this new capability offered by Viral Launch, sellers are able to request reviews from individual orders without navigating into the order details for each. To simplify things even further, sellers can request reviews from all eligible orders within a specified date range! The extension will then denote which orders have a pending review request as to make sure sellers aren’t attempting to send more than one email. 

What impact will Amazon’s ‘Request a Review’ button have on my business?

     There are several ways this new feature will impact sellers. Converting sales into reviews has never been easier so it’s something everyone should be taking advantage of to help better their product’s positioning in the eyes of potential customers. Our take on the impacts of this update are as follows:

  • Email follow-ups will quickly become old news…
    • Review rates from email follow-ups have always been very low and relatively ineffective compared to the early results of Amazon’s new ‘Request a Review’ button. 
  • New products will be able to build a solid review base much more quickly…
    • With review rates being up to 5x higher than traditional email-follow ups, new products will gain traction in their markets and become legitimate competitors.
  • Review counts for high-volume products will skyrocket…
    • While new products will find it easier to build an initial base of reviews, top sellers will see review numbers increasing at an exponential rate. 
  • Average product star ratings will begin to improve…
    • Since feedback is often left when a shopper has a negative experience, the ease of leaving a 5-star review will balance out the average rating on less-than-stellar products. 

     A study done by Marketplace Pulse is reinforcing some of our theories around the impacts this new feature will have. Since September (when the ‘request a review’ button was added) the Amazon listing for Apple Airpods has increased its number of reviews from less than 3,000 at a 4.4 star rating to over 38,000 with a 4.6 star rating! Since peak Q4, this listing has been generating over 600 product ratings/day. Another interesting thing to note is that the majority of feedback left has been in the form of star ratings without a written review. The screenshot below comes from a Marketplace Pulse article analyzing the rate at which Apple Airpods have received reviews vs ratings. As illustrated, it’s easy to tell that shoppers are much more inclined to leave feedback on past purchases if the process is simplified down to just one click.

Amazon review request tool: How can I get this awesome functionality?!?!

     For those of you with a current Market Intelligence subscription, you can access this new Amazon review request tool now at no extra fee. So log into Seller Central today and start building reviews at 5x the rate of your outdated email follow-up!

For anyone without an active Viral Launch subscription, don’t worry! Click here to subscribe today! 

Has the Amazon Review Policy Changed?

Is Amazon removing reviews? The Amazon FBA landscape is changing FAST. Far faster than we’ve ever seen. And I wouldn’t bet on it slowing down anytime soon. It’s those brands that are willing to embrace change, adapt, and play by the new rules that will always come out on top.
 
 
 
 
 

Possibly the hottest topic for sellers—and the area that is seeing the wildest changes right now—the Amazon review policy. We’ve identified six major review changes over the last couple of months. Some of them have had devastating effects on brands.

Without any formal statement or direction from Amazon on policy or structural changes, we in the seller communities are (classically) left in the dark wondering what’s going on. Some of us are asking what we’ve done wrong, and all of us asking ourselves what’s the best way to move forward.

As always, the Amazon seller forums and Facebook groups are running wild with speculation and questions as to what’s going on with the latest review changes, and few truly have a grasp on the magnitude of some of these changes.

If you’re at all familiar with Viral Launch, you know we are a data-driven company. And you know that we love to answer questions and solve problems with vast amounts of data (I mean how else? 😉 )!

To find out what is happening with reviews, we used the advanced data aggregation of our product and market research tools, Market Intelligence and Product Discovery. These product trackers gather historical and real-time data on well over 100,000,000 Amazon products. So we were able to uncover some jaw-dropping stats. You’ve got to see!

Change 1 of 6: Amazon Removing Reviews or The Great Amazon Review Abduction of 2018

Some of you have likely heard of or experienced a brand or product where Amazon was removing reviews over the last month or two. You—like everyone else—were probably asking yourself questions like, “How widespread is this?” and “Have other sellers lost as many reviews as me?”

We had the same questions. So our engineers started crunching the numbers. And here’s a glimpse of just how widespread Amazon’s latest review removal was. We should note that we are still working through the data to try to make it as clean as possible. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to reviews, including changes and discrepancies in variations. 

For each top-level category in the Amazon US market, we looked at the top 10,000 best selling ASINs with at least 90 days of history. From that set of products, we looked at how many of the listings lost reviews, which listings lost the most reviews, and how many reviews the category lost as a whole.

Here’s a summary of the report showing just how huge and far-reaching this review abduction is:

Reviews Removed between May 1 and May 31

Top 5 Categories with Highest Number of Reviews Removed from May 1 – May 31:

Cell Phones & Accessories: 324,423 reviews removed!

Health & Household:   305,777

Grocery & Gourmet Food: 204,553

Beauty & Personal Care: 193,242

Tools & Home Improvement: 177,375

Top 5 Products Hit With Review Removal:

Etekcity Digital Scale (B073W64CY8): 13,999

Pansonite VR Glasses (B07516YQ59): 10,202

       Bark Solution Dog Collar Training System (B01HSH194S):  6,690

Fox Print Princess Castle Play Tent (B0120XRWLE): 1,710

Amazon Basics Stainless Steel Kitchen Scale (B06X9NQ8GX): 1,472

Top 5 Most Affected Categories by Percent of Listings Affected:

Cell Phones & Accessories: 21.08% of the top 10,000 listings had reviews removed

Camera & Photo: 19.43%

Video Games: 19.05%

Health & Household: 17.66%

Sports & Outdoors: 17.39%

Download the full guide by entering your email in the form below!

The category that lost the most reviews was Cell Phones & Accessories with 2,108 of the top 10,000 listings losing 324,423 reviews. That’s the total number of reviews that we saw Amazon removing between May 1st and 31st. When accounting for the reviews that sellers regained (organically and otherwise), the category still came out with a net loss of 185,302 reviews.

The single listing that lost the most reviews in the Cell Phones & Accessories category was this Pansonite 3D VR Glasses. The listing lost 10,202 reviews taking them down from 10,339 reviews to just 65 reviews at its lowest!

The category that was hit second hardest was Health & Household with 1,766 of the top 10,000 listings losing 305,777 reviews. Accounting for reviews gained and re-gained, the net loss for the category was 177,324 reviews. Of the 10,000 Heath & Household listings we analyzed, the single listing that lost the most reviews was this Etekcity Digital Scale (B073W64CY8) which lost 13,999 reviews. 

You can see the spikes and drops in their review count using Market Intelligence. It’s crazy to look at the review graphs for some of these listings that lost a ton of reviews. You can see where Amazon removed the majority of their reviews and that they quickly got them back. Then Amazon removed them again, and the seller recovered the reviews again. This Etekcity Scale is an excellent example!

These graphs show you just how crazy things are right now. You can see these sellers fighting for the life of their listings. Losing that many reviews changes a product’s star rating, drastically affects the product’s perceived popularity, probably forfeits Best Seller and Amazon’s Choice badges, and just, in general, destroys a listing’s credibility, which we know affects sales.  

Change 2 of 6: Reviews Being Blocked

*The specifics of this section seem to currently be in a state of change, so depending on when you are reading this, it is possible that changes may have come about. Some of the tests were limited in scope as we wanted to leave reviews in an ethical fashion. The concepts and context are what’s most important.

From our perspective, this was the scariest change of the six we’re listing here.

To summarize, Amazon seemed to have put proverbial speed limits in place when it comes to review acquisition velocity. For the month of May and into June, it seemed as though the Amazon review policy was limiting the number of reviews a product could obtain in a day. If you exceeded the threshold/speed limit, the product would be punished with a review block for some period of time ranging 3 to 7 days.

Two very interesting facts from this finding:

1) unverified and verified reviews were treated separately

2) the review limit was a static number.

Let me explain.

After a bit of testing and observing, we noticed that receiving 3 unverified reviews in a day would cause Amazon to block the ASIN from receiving any additional unverified reviews. Similarly, after receiving 6-8 verified reviews in a day, Amazon would block the ASIN from receiving any additional verified reviews. And customers would see some form of this message:

PRO TIP: Unverified reviews are reviews in which the reviewer has not purchased the product on Amazon, or has purchased with a heavy discounted code

From what we could tell, the first time a review block was initiated, the product was put on a 7-day review block (for both verified and unverified reviews). We believe that during this time Amazon conducted an audit, combing through the account to try to develop an understanding of the authenticity of the reviews. We believe Amazon would look at things such as the content of the seller’s email follow-up sequence, the referral path of the reviewer, etc. If everything checked out, the product’s review block would be lifted (meaning it was again eligible to receive reviews), and if things did not check out, the account was suspended.

But passing the initial suspension did not mean you were completely in the clear! The majority of products that continued to exceed the Amazon imposed speed limit would have the review block reinstated. If a product reached the limit of 3 unverified reviews in a day, it would be blocked from receiving any additional unverified reviews. But it could still receive verified reviews. Similarly, if 6-8 verified reviews were left in a day, then the ASIN would be blocked from receiving additional verified reviews. These blocks seemed to last for 1-3 days at a time. We saw several listings cycle through this process multiple times.

For our clients with products selling 1,000+ units per day, receiving 6-10 reviews in a day is not uncommon. It was quite surprising that Amazon would choose to use a static number versus a percentage of sales. And it creates a very frustrating experience for sellers.

This review blockage was not exclusive to ASINs offered by third-parties. Many of Amazon’s own high-volume products had review blocks in place at one point or another.

At the time of this posting, here is a high volume product (#3 best seller in Beauty & Personal Care category) that currently has a block in place for unverified reviews. When you click on the star rating, you will see a pop-up stating that your review cannot be accepted at this time.

While review blocks are still happening, from what we’ve observed, as of mid-June, there have been far fewer than in May. We don’t yet have the answers as to why. Perhaps Amazon has adjusted the speed limit to a percentage of sales rather than a static number. Maybe they decided that one account review analysis was enough. Only time will tell.

We are grateful to Amazon for stepping up their game in terms of monitoring and enforcing the rules when it comes to reviews. A lot of the existing rules harm the ToS-abiding sellers while bad actors gain a competitive advantage by cheating the system. We really hope that, at the least, this is an indication of Amazon beefing up security and enforcement of their inauthentic review policies and programmatic monitoring.

Why this change was so scary.

This Amazon review policy change challenged some of the fundamental dynamics of being a third-party seller on Amazon. The very reason our customers have been able to build successful million-dollar businesses (and sometimes tens of millions of dollars) is they are able to develop competitive advantages in their market. Those advantages range from the ability to drive keyword ranking in organic search results, drive better conversion rates through product photography and better listing copy, having a better product and so many others.

A seller’s ability to drive quality reviews faster than their competitors is an important advantage in a savvy seller’s tool belt. Being able to drive reviews faster than your competition allows you to enter an existing market with 0 reviews, strategically drive reviews to catch up with competitors that may have hundreds or thousands, and achieve maximum sales potential. If you and your competitors were restricted to driving no more than 10 reviews per day, it would be impossible to catch up to existing players and obtain a relatively competitive number of reviews in a market, which could severely inhibit your ability to ever drive meaningful sales volume in that market. If this change came to fruition, it would not be as impactful if Amazon made the systemic review change we anticipate them to make, which we talk about in a podcast episode here.  

The opportunity for success as an FBA seller exists in the competitive advantages. Any erosion of opportunity for competitive advantage will make it more difficult for new products and new sellers in existing markets. We firmly believe that the high degree of competition on Amazon has been key to Amazon’s success as well as our clients’ success, so any potential infringement on that is intimidating.

Change 3 of 6: Reviews Split By Variation

The way that reviews are being attributed to variations seems to also be apart of the Amazon review policy change. It used to be that if you had a listing with variations a, b, and c, the reviews for each of those variations would be aggregated for a total review count and star rating that applied to each variation on the listing. So the total number of reviews for the each ASIN would be the same. That means if someone bought your purple flashlight and left a review, that review would apply to the red variation, the black variation, and the green variation.

Not so in the new world of the Amazon review policy! Amazon is slowly making a switch in the way that it handles reviews on listings with variations. Instead of applying a review for a variation to the whole listing, if someone leaves a review for, say, that purple flashlight, it will only show up on the purple flashlight variation.

So as a shopper is clicking through the product variations, the star rating and the review count under the title will change. That means if no one has leaves a review for your green flashlight yet, it will show up as having no stars and zero reviews!

Here are a few examples:

This Amazon review policy change in the way that Amazon is handling reviews for variations also means that if someone does finally leave a review for your green flashlight and it’s a 1-star, your rating for that variation is going to be really low. Even if you have a 5-star rating for the other variations. This is potentially bad news for sellers. It means that every variation you have is going to have to be top quality. And your strategy for providing stellar customer support and preventing bad reviews has to be good. 

Change 4 of 6: Seller Feedback Lost to a New Rolling 12 Month System

Have you ever jumped in your car to go somewhere and realized that you don’t have your cell phone with you? You run back inside and spend the next 15 minutes tearing your house apart trying to find it? Yeah. This is nothing like that.

This is like realizing you don’t have your cell phone, and running back inside to look for it except now your house is gone. And so is your cell phone, which you left on the kitchen counter by the way.

Seller feedback is being moved into a rolling 12 month system. This new system is especially significant for Retail Arbitrage, Online Arbitrage, and Wholesale people. Seller rating is a big part of what allows RA, OA, and Wholesale sellers to win over customers.

You know how when a shopper clicks on New (10) from $5.90  they are taken to a page with all the offerings on that listing. And each of those offerings is being sold by a seller with a rating. Well now instead of seeing that seller’s overall rating, Amazon is showing customers a rating from “over the past 12 months.”

So if you got four 1-star reviews in the last 12 months, those hold a lot more weight than they used to. Let’s say you used to have 2,000 seller reviews and 5 of them were 1-star reviews. That probably wasn’t pulling down your overall rating too much.

But now that Amazon is only looking at that last 12 months, it’s only looking at the last 500 reviews that you got. And four of those 1-star reviews happened during that time. Now you’re feeling those 1-star reviews in your rating.

But this change is not happening across the board. We’ve only seen certain seller accounts where the change has been implemented. So if you haven’t been affected yet, consider yourself lucky. This inconsistent introduction of a new system could end up being totally unfair to those sellers who have been pushed in already and whose star ratings may look less favorable than their competitors who are still part of the lifetime review system.

Under the rule of the new 12-month rolling reviews, consistency is the name of the game. You have to deliver an awesome customer experience with every single product on every single order if you want to be among the top-rated sellers on the platform.

Change 5 of 6: “The Great Amazon Reviewer Purge”

Amazon is getting rid of thousands of top reviewer accounts. After Amazon banned incentivized reviews in October of 2016, top reviewers started being kicked off the platform if Amazon suspected that they were not complying with the changes.

Amazon has been purging their Top 10,000 reviewers, banning them from the platform. In the subreddit The Great Amazon Purge, you can track how many reviewers have been removed so far. The subreddit has actually been tracking the number of removed Top 10,000 reviewers since February of 2016.

At the time of this posting, 4892 of the Top 10,000 reviewers have been removed.

Change 6 of 6: Suspension Changes And Account Bans

While the majority of Amazon sellers cite their number one fear as having their privileges revoked from selling on Amazon, we have very rarely seen this actually happen in the private label world (and for context, it was one seller of the 10,000+ we’ve worked with and was due to continued review manipulation).  An Amazon account suspension is incredibly scary and can be devastating to monthly financials too. From our limited experience, intuitively, we’d guess the average account suspension lasts no more than a week (would love some data on this if anyone wants to share!). From our sources, there is a new rule for suspensions due to review manipulation, and it comes in at whopping 21 day minimum suspension! That is tough!

From what we know, if there is an additional review manipulation infraction, the seller account will be BANNED. The kiss of death.  Unfortunately, we’ve seen this happen to two major accounts and I imagine many others (we did not dig into the data around account suspensions/bans, we’ve merely heard of these instances through the grapevine). Unfortunately, we do not have any specific information around the why behind these accounts being shut-down by Amazon.

How To Move Forward With the Amazon Review Policy Changes

The problem with any definitive suggestions in moving forward on Amazon, especially when it comes to reviews, is that we are not 100% confident in where the line of appropriate behavior versus non-ToS compliant behavior falls. If all of our questions could be answered, or the ToS was completely comprehensive, then as a company, we’d feel much more confident in providing a “best review strategy”.

The short answer is that right now, we suggest being conservative in your review acquisition strategy. This is especially our advice if your account has been suspended due to review manipulation. Over the next few months, we’ll start to develop a better conceptual understanding of what the Amazon review policy and what’s acceptable vs unacceptable.

Some account managers for our largest clients have even made the suggestions to stop sending all email follow-ups that mention the words review, feedback, etc. We are not saying that well-worded email follow-up sequences will lead to suspension, we just want to provide you with as much information as possible so you can make the decision about what activities to leverage in your review acquisition strategy.

It should go without saying that as a company, our suggestion is to abide by Amazon’s TOS when it comes to obtaining reviews. Knowing exactly what is and is not within TOS is another question. We still see many sellers participating in review groups (predominantly those in Facebook groups), and we cannot encourage you enough to stop this. We have strong evidence that a number of these groups have had the brands participating in these groups suspended. For those that are unfamiliar, there are secret Facebook groups in which a buyer offers to purchase a product at full price and leave a review, and the seller reimburses the buyer through a payment provider such as PayPal.

As our understanding of what is/is not acceptable in terms of review acquisition strategies, we will be sure to post updates. Reviews are a critical component of Amazon success and can be a major competitive advantage. We want to make sure that you are best equipped to avoid unintended suspensions and gain a competitive advantage with the most powerful, yet TOS compliant, review strategies available.

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