Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is no longer allowing incentivized reviews for products on its website.
Incentivized reviews is a process where the reviewer is given the product for free or at a discount. In return, the person gives the product a positive review on Amazon. The company notes that these types of reviews are only a small part of reviews on its website.
The change means that companies can no longer send free or discounted products to users in an effort to manipulate reviews. However, Amazon Vine will still allow this to occur. Vine is a feature where the online retailer handpicks reviewers to receive new or unreleased items in order to get early reviews up for those products.
The ban on incentivized reviews at Amazon also doesn’t include books. Authors have been allowed to send advance copies to their books to reviewers for ages and the online retailer said it isn’t looking to stop that practice.
Amazon has been working to stop incentivized reviews from skewing products scores on its website. This includes suing thousands of reviewers and companies that are trying to manipulate the system. It also notes that it is now harder to get a verified purchase badge than before.
Amazon isn’t the only company trying to stop incentivized reviews from messing with scores. Steam, a digital distribution platform that deals mostly in video games, introduced similar changes last month. It also added more filtering options to let users control what types of reviews they see with those changes.
