Amazon is clamping down on incentivised reviews in an attempt to cut down on bias

Amazon has significantly revamped its community guidelines to prioritise unbiased reviews over incentivised ones.

Earlier Amazon guidelines allowed sellers on Amazon to give away products to reviewers of their choosing in exchange for their reviews on Amazon. On paper, this system was still an open one with Amazon taking strict action against buyers and reviewers who pushed for biased reviews.

However, a recent study conducted by ReviewMeta concluded that such incentivised reviews skewed review ratings heavily in favour of the products. The study found that on average, an incentivised review would give a product a rating of 4.73 vs the 4.33 that a normal review would generate.

This difference might seem small, but ReviewMeta states that it pushed products from the fifty-fourth percentile to the ninety-fourth percentile. This skews all top-rated products heavily in favour of incentivised reviews. Products thus reviewed were also found to be 12 times less likely to receive a one-star rating.

On analysing the data, TechCrunch suggests that despite reviewers not being compensated for their reviews directly, on average, such reviewers would review 232 products. This in itself is a “windfall of sorts,” adds TechCrunch. Regular reviewers only reviewed on average of 31 products.

While it’s not clear if ReviewMeta’s findings had anything to do with the change to Amazon’s community guidelines, Amazon’s changes directly impact incentivised reviews, essentially killing them off.

Under the new guidelines, reviewers are selected by Amazon, not the sellers. These reviewers or selected on the basis of the number of “helpful” ratings that they receive and have expertise in a particular category.

Sellers who wish to have their products reviewed must approach Amazon and Amazon will send the products to its approved reviewers. This will ensure that a seller doesn’t even come into contact with the reviewer and that the review will be as unbiased as possible. Amazon will also limit the number of Vine reviews on any product.

Incentivised reviews will still exist, but only for pre-release products and to boost review numbers on select products, but only through Amazon.

An Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that current incentivised reviews are being “retroactively removed” only if they are in blatantly biased or otherwise violate community guidelines.