How to Improve Your Amazon Reviewer Ranking

My ascension in the Amazon reviewer hierarchy was inadvertent, unstudied. When one day, magically, the tag TOP 1000 REVIEWER appeared under my Amazon nom de guerre, I was so uneducated about the innerworkings of how one rose in the rankings that I thought it all depended on the number of reviews a reader posted, and not related to the exploitation of the Amazon systerm and common human failings to climb to the lofty heights of top reviewerdom.

Then one day I stumbled across some backchannel gossip on the Amazon site about one reviewer who had double posted slightly different reviews in order to reap more helpful votes, and the scales fell from my eyes. I realized there were some reviewers who were actively pursuing higher rankings. That they were gaming the Amazon system to more up the ladder. I still find this astounding, but it takes all kinds, I suppose.

My "case study" on which I base my suggestions for how to improve your Amazon ranking is my review of Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. It's the review I've gotten the most helpful votes for, nearly 200 at this point.

Here some reasons why. First off, it's an Amazon "Spotlight Review." Amazon selects reviews to be featured as first position or second position "Spotlight Reviews" from among existing reviews that have a lot of helpful votes already. That means these reviews are the first or second reviews people encounter when they check out the Customer Reviews for a book.

Being first or second or at least being on the first page, is a huge advantage when it comes to getting votes. Once a review is pushed to the second page (as new reviews come in older reviews get pushed back), the number of votes you receive falls dramatically. In fact, a review may never get a vote again. That's happened to me on a number of occasions.

Very positive reviews with 5 stars get more helpful votes than lukewarm reviews with 3 or 4 stars. Negative reviews get the fewest helpful votes of all. I think this is because if people are looking for book on a subject or by an author they are interested in and so are predisposed to wanting it. Negative or lukewarm reviews are not appreciated. On a related note, I have discovered negative reviews of conservative books, espeecially those by conservative provocateurs like those on Fox cable, call forth swarms of negative votes. And, of course, conservatives being conservatives, ad hominen attacks against the reviewer, too. The same holds true in the opposite case as well, although it appears that the volume and intensity of the attacks are not as extreme.

The initial interest in a book generally wears out fast, for example, reviews that are a couple of months past the publication date don't get much voting activity. This is especially true of topical books. Although when the paperback comes out, there's usually another flurry of activity.

So for those interested in getting lots and lots of helpful votes on Amazon, here's these findings operationalized for that end:

Try to be the first reviewer of the book, and get the most helpful votes you can so that your review will be chosen as a Spotlight Review. You will greatly benefit from this because of first or second position bias.

Topical books that play on any right wing / left controversy attract the most vociferous comments, votes, and presumably, a good deal of site traffic. So if you want to get lots of helpful votes, strenuously agree with the author and rave about their book, then sit back and watch the helpful votes roll in.

Conversely, avoid unhelpful votes. Don't go into the lion's den and attack conservative books because you will pay a big price. "Unhelpful" votes will be subtracted from your "helpful" votes and your ranking will suffer accordingly.

In short, the Amazon voting system rewards very positive reviews and recency and punishes negative reviews and lack of recency. Enthusiasm and speed are everything!

Me? I call 'em as a see 'em and let the votes fall where they may.