It's that time of the year when your interest veers towards Amazon, but it's also that time of year where you can get befuddled by fake Amazon reviews. Have you learned to spot them yet?
The Review Index (in beta as of this writing) can help you buy that perfect electronic gadget without wondering whether all those positive reviews are disingenuous, thus making online shopping less tedious in the process.
The web app is a multi-role fighter among all Amazon shopping tools. Copy-paste the product URL into the search box and the app goes to work. It does three things:
- It aggressively filters out fake Amazon reviews.
- It summarizes all the reviews and presents a performance scorecard with a feature-wise breakdown.
- It works like a comparison shopping tool and makes your buying decision easier.
The Review Index works best when the product is well-reviewed. Also, right now the web app only works with Amazon US but support for other countries is expected soon. You can also install the handy Chrome extension if you are a heavy shopper.
The Review Index Filters Irrelevant Reviews
The Review Index does the hard work of removing the spam reviews. Click the Spam test for more details if you are interested to see how the app works at detecting the fake reviews.
It also removes all reviews older than two years because they might not be relevant for an updated product. Also, pay attention to the number of unverified reviews which is also another set you can ignore as the reviewers haven't bought the product themselves.
Most shoppers can just glance at the red and green bars for each bar and see the percentage of favorable versus unfavorable reviews for each feature. Open two browser windows side by side and see how two products stack up against each other on individual features. You will get the picture of which one you should buy. And yes, do leave helpful reviews!
Do you trust Amazon reviews? What clues do you look for when you shop?