Amazon reviewer ranking – how does it work and how to improve your rank?

Not all reviewer understands what is amazon review ranking, how does it work and whats the use of it. I am going to provide some key information on this topic here.

1. What is Amazon Reviewer Ranking?
2. How is Amazon Rank calculated?
3. How often its updated?
4. Whats the benefit or significance of it?
5. Any tips to improve the reviewer rank?

Some tips would also help you in how to write better reviews, I will try to post a separate blog on this topic.

1. What is Amazon Reviewer Ranking:

This is your reviewer profile rank compared to other reviewers. There are many people providing product reviews on amazon and based on how helpful reviews are provided, each reviewer profile is Ranked. You can view current top reviewer list here – http://www.amazon.com/review/top-reviewers

You can view your own reviewer rank on your amazon profile page or on member reviews page – http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews

This is how your rank will look like, here I have shown Rank 1 as an example.

2. How is Amazon Rank calculated:

Key factors which affects amazon reviewer rank are:

1. How many reviews have user written
2. How many helpful votes has been received on those reviews
3. How recent are the reviews

Negative votes doesn’t impact rank that much as people believe so. In my experience, positive votes do help your rank more than -ve votes having reverse affect. As long as you are getting more than 80% helpful votes, you should not worry about -ve votes.

Also – more recent the reviews are, more impact it will have on your rank.

Example – if a user has 100 reviews which were posted 3 months back and a user 2 has same no of reviews but these were posted in last 1 month. User 2 will have better Rank.

This calculation is not so simple, but it will give you basic idea.

Another scenario – if someone is at Rank 2500 and they stop reviewing for some time. Their rank will come down even if they are getting helpful votes on reviews. This is because more people would be active in reviews and their review will be more recent.

I am not saying old reviews doesn’t hold any value, but if reviews are more recent, it will have more impact on your rank. that’s why your rank will start going up once you have been active for 1-2 months.

3. How often amazon updates the reviewer ranking:

Usually amazon updates the reviewer ranking every 2-3 days. but this is not fixed, sometimes its takes longer. During Dec 2015, ranks were not updated for around a month. So when you don’t see rank not being updated, nothing to worry about.

4. What is the Benefit or Significance of Amazon Reviewer Rank:

Amazon shows Top reviewer badge after a certain rank like Top 1000, Top 500, Top 100..

These badges identifies Best Amazon Reviewers. Reaching Top 1000 ranking is a significant milestone for any reviewer.

Coming to the benefits of Top Ranks, Firstly I would say any Rank in 5 digits (1 to 99,999) is a good rank. Top reviewer has a chance to get invited to Vine Voice.

Vine program is official amazon review program where reviewer get free products to reviews. Vine program is not open for everyone, amazon invites certain selected reviewers. Rank plays is crucial role in it but rank is not the only factor. Rank 500 reviewer might get into Vine where as Rank 100 might not get invited to it. I believe Amazon also look at quality of review and type of products reviewed along with Rank.

Other than Vine program, there are many seller and companies which look for top reviewers to send free products for testing and review. When you have a good rank, if you good chance of getting selected. Please note – not all seller consider Rank, but some do.

Its like when some one has limited quantity of free samples, they will try to pick best people out of whoever applied or shown interested in reviewing the product.

Once you reach top rank, many seller will start reaching out to you directly via email if you have email listed on your amazon profile.

5. Tips to improve Amazon Reviewer Rank

Reviewer rank will increase slowly initially. But if you are doing reviews consistently (like 3 or more reviews every week, just a example), after 1-2 months – rank will start going up fairly quickly.

1. Keep doing quality reviews. by quality reviews I mean, review should be well formatted where you explain pros and cons of a product. Try to put bullet points in reviews
2. Keep doing reviews consistently – at least 3 reviews per week
3. Once you have 100 or more reviews out there, you will start noticing more frequent helpful votes. This is because you have more reviews out there, so more chances of getting votes
4. Don’t just do ‘review product’ reviews, if you have spare time. you can do reviews of other stuff which you either bought from amazon at full cost or purchased from elsewhere. Amazon doesn’t restrict you from doing only items purchased from amazon. Example – if you have a product (any product) purchased from Target, Walmart, Ikea, best buy or anywhere else and that product is listed on amazon, you can write a review for it.
5. One things about votes – don’t ask people to do votes on your reviews, votes should be genuine, any manipulation can get you in trouble
6. Always add images on reviews. reason being, your review might not show up on 1st page of reviews. but if your review has images, chances of someone reading your review increases. There is customer review images section which many people uses before buying a product.
7. don’t ignore smaller stuff like charging cable or any daily use products. Some stuff doesn’t require much detail in review, but quick review can turn out to be one of your best review. with some images and good summary of review, you might get more votes on these reviews than compared to well written detailed reviews (sometimes) . And this will also increase your no of reviews even if you don’t get helpful votes
8. Look at your amazon order history and see if you would like to provide review of any item you had purchased in past. This will also help your review profile as you will have mix of review sample reviews and full purchase reviews. only doing free stuff reviews in not recommended
9. If you are going to provide a detailed review with lot of info, give some headings in each paragraph so that user can decide which part they want to read. It will add some value if you can first provide short summary of review and then go in detail. Reason being – not everyone would have time to read long review.
10. Try to add at least 4 images in your review. more images the better. Don’t add similar image though, take pics at different angle and while using the product as well.
11. Read product desc before writing review, this will improve your review quality