Despite being tainted by bogus reviews for a long time, Amazon never acknowledged the problem; however it looks like things are about to change as the e-commerce giant has reportedly rejigged its product reviews systems.
Amazon has reportedly revamped its product reviews systems for its US customers in a bid to mute fake ratings on the e-commerce giant's service.
Amazon, United States' largest Internet-based retailer revealed that it is now using machine-learning tech that it had developed to make a clean sweep as far as old and sub-par reviews are concerned.
"The system will learn what reviews are most helpful to customers ... and it improves over time. It's all meant to make customer reviews more useful," Amazon spokeswoman Julie Law said in an interview.
That change which initiated Friday, June 19 may go unnoticed at first as Amazon's new platform gradually starts altering the star ratings and top reviews on product pages. According to reports on CNet, the new system is expected to give more importance to newer reviews, basically reviews from verified Amazon purchasers, and also those that more customers vote up as being helpful.
As of now, there is no information whether this new platform will be available to other countries as well.
Talking about the new system, an Amazon spokesperson said in an interview with CNet that "it's just meant to make things that much more useful so people see things and know it reflects the current product experience."
In addition, The multinational's new weighted review system will use machine learning in order to ensure that Amazon-defined best reviews are surely featured on a product's page, thus reducing number of crappy and/or bogus reviews that are sometimes found on a product listing, PC Mag noted.
Without a doubt, customer reviews have been an important part of Amazon's websites for over 20 years, with written reviews as well as 5-star rating system becoming a crucial form of accountability and an indication of popularity and quality for selling products online.
Moreover, Amazon carefully considers any changes to the ratings system in order to make sure customers continue to trust it. In order to ward off a small, however potentially threatening number of phony reviews, Amazon sued some alleged fake review websites back in April.
Amazon very carefully checked the new platform before actually launching it, Law said, but she declined to say how long Amazon had been working on it.
"It's just meant to make things that much more useful," Law noted, "so people see things and know it reflects the current product experience."
For example, company will sometimes make small adjustments to a product or even address customer complaints, though this product is not officially updated or renamed. Law said that with the new system these small tweaks should become more noticeable to people buying products.
