When using a review aggregation service to collect, measure and analyze your product reviews from multiple sites, you might notice some duplication from time to time. In fact, one of the most frequently asked questions we get from our customers is, “why am I seeing some duplicate reviews”?
Although our Senior Analyst Carson Stanwood notes that “less than one tenth of one percent of all reviews that come into our system are duplicates”, there are a few reasons for the occasional duplication.
- Review syndication — This is a common practice for some review management platforms. It allows a brand to replicate a review from one site to another site selling the same product. The key is that the other site must be using that same review management platform. One drawback of this is they do not have the ability to only syndicate positive reviews.
- Irate customers — If the duplicates are 1 star reviews, there is a chance there is an angry purchaser who is posting the reviews on different commerce sites. One tell-tale sign that this is the case is if the review is from Amazon and not from a verified purchaser. If a brand is not using a syndication program and has some duplicate negative reviews, this is a likely scenario.
- Competitor sabotage — It could be another brand is perpetuating negative reviews about your products. You hate to think that this is a possibility in this day and age, but it’s just that. A possibility. It’s very tough to determine whether this is the case, but there are some common signs your Channel Signal rep can help you use to determine this.
Are Duplicate Reviews Bad?
The thing about duplicate reviews is, most shoppers aren’t going to know a review is a double from another site. Therefore, if a review is published on two different sites, we recommend the brand analyze it as two separate pieces of feedback. In the rare case that there appears to be a duplicate review on the same product and site (most e-commerce sites have automated ways to prevent this), the star average starts to become affected. This is an instance where you may want to employ your Customer Service team to mitigate one or both of the reviews as malicious.
If you’d like to better understand your product review landscape, try a Channel Signal demo today.
