Amazon Overhauling Customer Reviews

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon says it's making some big changes to its product review system, one of the most heavily used on the internet and a vital part of Amazon's business. A machine-learning platform will endeavor to select helpful reviews with an emphasis on more recent ones. The average score will change as well: new reviews will be weighted higher than old reviews. Reviews from verified purchasers will have more influence as well, and also reviews voted up by other customers. "For example, sometimes a company will make small tweaks to a product or address some customer complaints, though this product isn't officially updated or renamed. With the new system, [Amazon] said, these small modifications should become more noticeable when shoppers are buying products." Because the review system is so important to customers, Amazon will be rolling out changes slowly, and watching for anything that breaks or gets skewed in unexpected ways.

Comments

Re:Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ

[AmiMoJo]

Yup. Seriously, was putting the share button where the "read more..." link used to be designed to make people accidentally click on it? Do you guys do any kind of user testing at all, or were you fully aware that's the most clicked on link on the site and just wanted to abuse it?

May finally be time to abandon ship...

[bradley13]

As Dice transforms /. into yet another random site (video section, meaningless pictures attached to articles, and now social media buttons), it become clear that I am no longer part of their target audience. I hate those crappy social media share buttons - they're nothing but trackers in another form.

Hello Soylent