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Amazon has cracked down on the number of reviews its customers can post.
Shoppers will now be able to leave five reviews each week, as the ecommerce company looks to regulate untrustworthy comments from individuals.
The company has outlined new rules that will be enforced from December 4th.
The newly introduced rules will apply to a majority of products sold via Amazon, but will not apply to reviews left for books.
This move comes after Amazon became aware some sellers on its web site were purchasing customer reviews from writers.
Retail analyst Patrick O’Brien said: “The change makes a lot of sense. There has been a massive clampdown on fake, bogus, and heavily influenced reviews recently.
“Amazon’s review system is very impressive in terms of the volume of reviews there, it’s far superior to those of competitors. The new rules will make it very difficult for people who are trying to make money by selling fake reviews. It does show Amazon is taking this matter seriously."
Amazon has previously issued a number of lawsuits to deter sellers from buying reviews for their products. As Amazon looks to regulate customer comments on its web site, fake reviews across consumer websites is a practice that has been suspected for quite some time now.
The company has so far struggled to counteract this, but has introduced incentives such as the Vine program.
The program works by getting customers to become “Vine voices,” based upon their reviewer rank. This rank tells other consumers how insightful and trustworthy their comments are.
Vine members are rewarded with free items provided by sellers who also take part in the program.
Amazon’s vice president of customer experience, Chee Chew has previously vowed to make improvements to the Vine program in order to combat bias reviews.
