Incentivized Product Reviews Nixed by Amazon
Paying for Amazon.com customer reviews is officially a thing of the past. On Monday, the company announced that it was ending the policy of “incentivized reviews.” This occurred when sellers used pay-for-play techniques to compensate people for writing positive products reviews in order to help the seller win the “Buy Box” spot. Amazon said the changes apply to all product categories, with the exception of books.
Total Retail’s Take: Outright paying for reviews has always been against Amazon’s rules, however, this incentivized system of reviews was able to have a significant impact on overall product ratings. The Next Web reported that incentivized reviews help bump, on average, a product from the 94th percentile to the 54th percentile. Amazon also announced that it has improved ratings over the past year by introducing machine learning. Hopefully these changes help the best products shine on the marketplace — not the ones that are paid for.
