FBA. Support Case Answer. Product star rating at Amazon

Dear Seller,

I am *** from the Amazon Selling Partner Support team. This case has been forwarded to me for further review. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

With reference to your email, I understand that your concern is regarding the star rating of the ASIN: **** on the detail page. Also, I understand that you wanted to know the reason for the ASIN having only one star rating even though the product has 67% of 5-star reviews.

Upon checking on this with the concerned department, I would like to bring to your kind notice that as per the recent update, the star rating on a product is not all average ratings but Amazon uses a machine learned algorithm to calculate the weighted star rating (Average Customer Rating on Retail website). Because of this, the product is currently having only one star rating even though it has 67% of 5-star reviews. Moreover, there are currently only 3 customer reviews on the ASIN: **** and as one of them is a negative review, it has an impact on the overall star rating of the product.

Also, I would like to let you know that the new system, a product’s star rating will be a weighted average. Please understand that we will test a number of factors to determine how to arrive at a weighting algorithm including recency of a review, whether or not it is verified, reviewer trustworthiness, review trustworthiness, recent helpfulness votes on a review. The new ratings system will also take into account one-tap ratings, which are ratings without a review. 

Reviews will be ranked using an algorithm similar to the rating algorithm to ensure that the most useful reviews are surfaced above others. 

We will also modify the layout of the reviews section on the detail page to provide more confidence. Prominent changes include a modified histogram, removal of “most recent reviews” panel, inclusion of trust line, and a streamlined design. 

Please understand that this will provide a star rating that is more representative of the current product. It will ensure that helpful reviews remain relevant and timely. Customers will be less likely to encounter dated reviews or campaigns/manipulations that undermine their confidence in Amazon reviews. 

Sellers and manufacturers will benefit from star ratings that adapt more quickly to product quality improvements, including resolution of counterfeit issues. Seller’s offers will be less susceptible to review manipulation from campaigns and competitors. This new system will allow us to place less weighting on suspicious reviews while maintaining a high bar for removing reviews. 

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