Amazon Again Tests Removing Product Review Counts from Search Results
Between August 14 and 15, 2024, Amazon dramatically scaled the display of search pages with no reviews shown. On the August 14 peak, a full 15.6% of the top one million Amazon US search terms displayed no review counts, but this level quickly came back down in the ensuing days. This follows similar short-lived rollouts in both August and September of 2023, although each of those tests lasted more than a week.
Another important difference is that, unlike the previous tests where no-review searches were roughly equally present across categories, this time around the impacted SERPs were primarily concentrated across CPGs.
Amazon seems to not only be narrowing the scope of the test from a category point of view, but also expanding it in other ways. The ‘X bought in last week/month’ labels that often accompany a search result – which were present across more than 97% of ‘no review’ searches prior to the test – were gone from 38% of those searches during the test period. This largely eliminated any form of ‘social proof’ on the impacted SERPs.
Biggest Takeaways for Brands
- Be prepared for ‘reviewless’ searches to become more regular across the impacted categories
- Amazon narrowing this test to focus on CPG categories nearly exclusively is a good indication that any more permanent rollout of this change will be restricted to these categories
- For impacted brands, if and when review-less searches become more permanent, the value of nesting new products under parent ASINs to share review counts goes away
- Review counts sunsetting across certain product categories is a huge change to the product launch ecosystem
- Successfully launching a product on Amazon is very difficult, but if review ‘moats’ become a thing of the past, it opens more avenues for newer brands and new products to launch efficiently
- August is the time Amazon likes to run these types of tests
- This marks the second straight year where Amazon has run a ‘no-review’ SERP test in mid-August
- It’s worth being ready for similar short-lived disruptions in August 2025
