This episode breaks down how Amazon sellers can protect their listings from review damage by separating legitimate customer feedback from reviews that violate Amazon policy. It explains what qualifies for removal (like competitor mentions, exact pricing, profanity, and shipping/FBA complaints), why review quality impacts conversion rate, rank/BSR, and PPC costs, and how review manipulation has evolved from obvious spam to more subtle attacks. It also covers why sellers should act proactively before peak season, what “white-hat” compliance actually looks like when working cases through Amazon, how to spot suspicious review patterns (including review velocity spikes and repeated text), and what Amazon is doing with AI systems to reduce abuse—while still allowing some violations to slip through.
Key Takeaways
- Only reviews that break Amazon’s rules are removable; “I didn’t like it” doesn’t count.
- Biggest violation buckets: competitors, exact price mentions, profanity, and FBA/shipping blame.
- Review health directly affects CTR, CVR, PPC efficiency, and organic rank/BSR.
- Bad actors target high-LTV categories because the ROI of sabotage is higher.
- Review manipulation shifted from lazy copy-paste spam to more nuanced, harder-to-detect attacks.
- Proactive cleanup beats reactive panic—Amazon response timelines make last-minute fixes risky.
- “Fast removals” promises are a red flag; compliance-first methods protect the account in the long term.
- Amazon uses AI to block huge volumes of abuse, but sellers still need monitoring for what slips through.
