Amazon Ratings vs Reviews

Everyone knows that product reviews are at the core of Amazon’s secret sauce as a marketplace. Sellers have gone above and beyond in trying to prop up their products while still remaining within (and often without) the Amazon Guidelines and Terms of Service. As Amazon has been trying to navigate this Black Hat storm, they’ve added another aspect to product reviews that have inadvertently made it even more difficult for Amazon Sellers. 

Ratings vs Reviews

What you will often notice while shopping on Amazon is that next to the star rating on the listing, it no longer says “Reviews” and is replaced by “Ratings”. What this means is that Amazon customers are no longer required to leave a description when leaving feedback on a product, and can instead just give their purchase a star rating. In short, if there is a description: Review. If not: Rating. 

What This Means for Sellers

The trouble with ratings comes in a couple of different forms. The first is that ratings do not show in any of the Seller Central review dashboards, and you often cannot tag a date to when the rating was left on your product unless you are tracking it daily either manually or with software support (which many software tools still do not catch). 

The second and often larger issue is that there is no way of getting any information about who left the rating. This causes problems if you want to identify a customer to link the rating to in an effort to reach out and resolve a problem. It also makes it especially difficult to identify if it is even a legitimate rating in the first place. Some sellers have even claimed a sudden drop in average star rating due to a number of low ratings coming in all at once, leading many to think this is a new method of competitor sabotage. 

As of now, Amazon does not seem to be lending any solutions to these problems, but we don’t expect ratings to be going anywhere, anytime soon. Although if you do notice any suspicious activity on your account, it will be best if you have some historical information that you have tracked ready at hand, and then you can only hope that Amazon’s Seller Support will have a little more insight to help you (big emphasis on hope).