Jun 3rd 2020
Resources
- Facebook Ads for Amazon [Video Course]
- Drive Traffic To Amazon [Ultimate Guide]
- Get More Amazon Reviews [Ultimate Guide]
Bottom Line: Amazon Verified Purchase reviews are much more powerful than unverified reviews. They have more weight in the system Amazon uses to calculate product ratings, and they are also more attractive to buyers. To get more Verified Purchase reviews on Amazon, make sure you’re using organic methods to ask for reviews, and don’t discount your products too heavily.
Not all Amazon product reviews are created equal. Some are more trustworthy and more valuable than others.
These are Verified Purchase reviews, and they are worth their weight in gold (figuratively speaking). They do more for your product and generate more trust for you and your product (which will result in more conversions).
Read on to learn all about Amazon Verified Purchase reviews, and why these few words are so important for Amazon sellers.
What is an Amazon Verified Purchase Review?
A Verified Purchase review is one that Amazon has confirmed to have come from a real purchase, and has not been manipulated or influenced at all.
Verified reviews are visible by this tag on the product review, indicating the customer purchased the product on Amazon.com:
Customers can also filter by “Verified purchase only” when searching through product reviews.
To get a Verified Purchase tag, first of all, the review needs to come from an Amazon account that has previously purchased this product.
You can review products on Amazon that you didn’t actually buy on the Amazon marketplace. For example, you may have purchased the item on another marketplace, or in a physical store. These reviews will not have the Verified Purchase tag though.
Secondly, the purchase can’t be a heavily discounted one. If a customer leaves a review on a purchase made with a large discount, Amazon figures the discount will have influenced the review (even if it’s only subconciously). Thus, these products can receive reviews, but they will not be Verified.
The actual cutoff for discounts to allow the Verified Purchase tag is unknown. Until not long ago, the consensus threshold was 50% off. Nowadays, it’s believed to be 20-30%.
Summing Up: Verified Purchase reviews are authenticated reviews, left by real customers who made a purchase on Amazon.
Why Are Verified Reviews Important?
There’s a variety of reasons why Verified purchase reviews are much more powerful. First of all, is trust.
Product reviews are there to deliver social proof to potential customers. Evidence that people have bought your product before, and that it was up to the standard they expected.
Social proof isn’t binary – it comes in varying levels. A review carrying the Verified Purchase tag brings more social proof, since it’s less likely to be a fake review. Thus, for convincing customers to buy your product, one Verified review may be more powerful than 5 unverified ones.
Verified product reviews are also weighted more heavily by Amazon. The average star rating on a product isn’t an exact average of all your reviews. Amazon uses machine learning to calculate this, using a number of factors, including giving more power to Verified Purchase reviews.
Finally, Verified reviews are more likely to stick around long term. At a time when many reviews are being deleted (sometimes automatically deleted by Amazon’s bots), unverified reviews are first on the chopping block. Plus, too many unverified reviews in a short space of time can trigger a temporary review block for your product – something that can cost you big time.
Summing up: Verified Reviews help you get more conversions, as customers trust these reviews more than unverified ones. They are also weighed more heavily towards your overall star rating, and they look less suspicious (and are less likely to be removed by Amazon).
