A large number of old negative reviews have been found! Are Amazon sellers going to roll back again?

A very strange thing is happening these two days. A lot of negative reviews suddenly appeared on the front desk of many sellers. Upon closer inspection, they were all negative reviews from a long time ago. For some reason, they appeared on the homepage of the details these two days!

There are quite a lot of them. Not only in our WeChat group, but also in online forums, many sellers are discussing what is going on with these old reviews that were suddenly dug up.

According to the information we have collected, many of these old negative reviews are from 2018 and 2019. Some sellers reported that these negative reviews had more likes. It is very likely that competitors were causing trouble and bumping up their own negative reviews, which greatly affected the product traffic and conversion.

There is indeed the possibility of a spoof by the opponent, because liking and disliking reviews was a very common means of making trouble in the past, often seen when sellers in the red ocean category fight and maliciously attack each other. However, since the liking algorithm was modified, the weights of liking and disliking (Not helpful) have changed greatly, and disliking is even useless. The effect of liking has also become very poor, and it also eats into the weight of the account, so it has been quiet for a long time.

In the recent wave of old negative reviews being pinned to the top, there are some sellers whose situations are the opposite. The number of likes for the negative reviews has not changed much, but they are inexplicably placed on the homepage.

There are only two possible reasons for this: one is a system bug that messes up the order of review display. The other is that Amazon has updated the factors that influence review weight and restructured the entire display order algorithm. Some old negative reviews have a higher weight in the new algorithm and are therefore placed on the homepage.

Whether it is an algorithm update or a system bug, it is obvious that someone is deliberately taking advantage of this situation to trip up their opponents.

The competition between Amazon sellers has always been fierce. It is common for them to end up damaging each other's products, including but not limited to changing the main pictures of each other's products, changing categories, giving bad reviews, and liking bad reviews. In short, the goal is to prevent the other party from placing any orders.

The peak of malicious competition should be the "VC Python Incident" in 2018, when a pet seller lost the main link on which his store depended for survival due to the crazy attack of VCs and eventually went bankrupt. This caused a wave of condemnation in the cross-border industry, and a large number of mid-level sellers joined forces to attack the head seller who didn't like to stir up trouble. Even Amazon officials paid attention to this incident and led a series of policies to reduce the rights of VC accounts, so that the VC Python would not reappear.

In this negative review incident, of course, there is a reason for the change in Amazon's algorithm, but the change in the algorithm will only affect the weight. It is impossible to increase the number of likes for negative reviews from a few years ago. Therefore, the number of likes for old negative reviews of some sellers has increased a lot and even appeared on the homepage. It can be basically confirmed that someone is behind the scenes, taking advantage of the change in the weight of likes to suppress competitors.

In addition, the algorithm update this time has lowered the weight of likes for positive reviews. If the quality of the positive review account is questionable or has been contaminated by fake orders, the effect of likes will be even less, and it will be difficult for sellers to deal with these negative reviews on the homepage. But there is no need to rush. Amazon has just updated its algorithm not long ago, and the capture of like weights is not stable enough. It is recommended that you try to deal with negative reviews on the homepage again after a while.

Since Amazon was investigated for antitrust violations, its tolerance for sellers’ gray operations has been much lower. The closure of the small cards and review requests in the middle of the year fully illustrates this point. If there are really sellers using the like system to attack their opponents, I believe this loophole will be plugged soon, and the requirements for buyer accounts and weight review for likes will definitely become more and more stringent.