How many customer reviews were deleted?
In the last few days, there have been repeated reports that Amazon had apparently started to delete reviews. Incentivized reviews were often stated as the reason for this action.
We therefore started to check all reviews we have in our database (currently around 10 million on amazon.de). We aim to continue checking all reviews periodically going forward to determine if there were deletions or changes (by the reviewer, for example). In the future, you will see this information directly and also be able to set up alerts for it in the AMALYZE Research Module.
However, since it will take some time to check all reviews and we don’t want to keep you waiting that long, we will publish interim updates here.
Since we are checking the reviews in chronological order, please note that this information is not necessarily representative until all 10 million reviews have been checked.
AMALYZE Review Tool
As soon as all customer reviews have been checked, we will provide you with a tool that allows you to determine if you have been affected by the repair and, if so, to what extent, based on ASINs.
Update 12/02/2016 09:00 am
By now, we have checked around 5% of all our saved reviews and have not found a major change.
- Percentage of checked reviews posted by testers: 3.38 %
- Percentage of deleted reviews that were posted by testers: 71.32 %
- Percentage of deleted reviews: 1.00 %
- Percentage of deleted reviews that were “verified”: 53.8 %
The percentage of deleted reviews by testers is thereby around 0.7132 % (+ 6%). The current quota of deleted reviews by testers is 21.10 %.
Update 12/01/2016 09:00 pm
- Based on the reviews checked to date, 3.24 % were written by testers, i.e., were recognized by AMALYZE as posted by testers.
- 0.95 % of the reviews checked to date were deleted.
- Of the reviews recognized as deleted up to now, 71 % were written by testers.
- Of the reviews recognized as deleted to date, only 44% were “non-verified”.
- Percentage of deleted reviews by testers is currently around 0.67 % (0,95 * 0,7123).
- Percentage of all tester reviews is 3.24 %.
- The actual quota of deleted tester reviews is thus 21%.
Update 12/01/2016 02:00 pm
- Of the reviews checked to date, 4% were written by testers, i.e., were recognized by AMALYZE as being posted by testers.
- Approx. 1% of the reviews checked to date have been deleted in the meantime.
- Of the reviews recognized as deleted, 70% were written by testers.
- Of the reviews recognized as deleted to date, 61% were “non-verified”.
- So far, it seems as though reviews are not being deleted based on products or ASIN, but based on reviewer. Meaning that it seems that a reviewer is classified as “product tester” based on his/her review history and a majority of this person’s reviews are then deleted.
