Amazon Is Testing A Controversial Change To Its Rating System

Amazon is apparently testing a design change for its rating system, one that puts emphasis on the number of five-star reviews a product has received. The test was spotted by Android Police, which reports seeing the rating change on both the desktop and mobile versions of the platform. Under the current design, users browsing Amazon see a line of five stars next to a number presenting the product's average rating. Users can hover over the stars to see a percentage breakdown of each rating tier.

The new design does away with the five-star lineup in the search results, instead replacing it with a single star icon sandwiched between two numbers: the average rating based on all of the product reviews, as well as the percentage of five-star reviews the product has received. Presumably, users will still be able to see the percentage breakdown per star rating if they manually click or tap on it, but as with any test, the design could change radically by the time it launches for all users — assuming Amazon doesn't scrap it entirely.

The new rating design has already proven controversial among those who have seen it, as there are concerns that it may be used to give customers the wrong impression about a product. If, for example, a company is able to get a large number of five-star reviews published on its product page, users may focus on that figure and ignore a litany of negative reviews. It is possible that Amazon may attempt to address that potentiality by only showing the percentage of five-star reviews left by trusted users whose purchases were verified, however. At this time, the test appears to be limited in scope, and it remains unclear whether Amazon will roll it out more broadly in the future.

It's perhaps no surprise that Amazon is testing a change to its rating system, as the company recently announced the arrival of a new feature intended to simplify things: AI-generated review summaries. Of note, the feature seems to be intended to cut down on rating manipulation by only factoring in reviews from customers who are trusted and whose purchases are verified. Amazon notoriously has a problem with fake and incentivized reviews that can be used to manipulate customers into purchasing low-quality or counterfeit products. The company has taken steps to address the problem by, among other things, suing so-called fake review brokers.