#486 - HUGE Amazon Reviews Change! | Weekly Buzz 1/9/26

Amazon just changed how reviews work, dropped new discounted MCF pricing, and AI shopping tools are creating serious tension for brands. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the AM PM podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host Shioali Patel and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, Tik Tok shop, and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has and we also give you a training tip of the week. So, let's get started and see what's buzzing. To start off, I've got a major announcement for you straight from Amazon regarding how reviews will be shared across variations. Rolling out between February and May of 2026. Amazon is tightening the rules on which variations can share reviews to more accurately reflect the products that customers are seeing. More specifically, the relevance of why I'm pointing it out is this could instantly change how many reviews customers are seeing on certain listings. Historically, if you had one parent listing with, say, 12 variations, and each variation had 10 reviews, then shoppers would see one big number, which is 120 reviews, no matter which variation that they clicked into. But Amazon is now saying, "Not so fast. Going forward, reviews will only be shared when the variations are genuinely the same product with minor differences." that does not affect functionality. And if a difference changes how that product performs, how it feels, how it tastes, how it smells or is used, then those reviews will be decoupled. and I quote, "Reviews will continue to be shared for the following variations. Color or pattern variations of the same product, size variations that maintain the same function, like king-sized and queen-sized bedding, pack size or quantity variations, secondary scent variations for non-scented products, like lemonscented versus unscented cleaning products, different model fitments for the same product type, like phone cases for different models. And this update altogether absolutely kills one of the oldest black hat tricks on Amazon, which is resurrecting zombie listings. We're talking about sellers finding a dead as that may have been from years ago, like a computer stand with a thousand reviews and then slapping on a completely unrelated product like a Bluetooth projector onto it as a variation and instantly being able to launch with fake social proof. The caveat being if you sell products where the variation feels similar but is actually a key buying factor for things like candle scents or coffee flavor supplements or food, you may wake up one morning and then see that your thousand review listing suddenly has 10 reviews. So let's just once again walk through some very specific examples. Say that you have a red cotton t-shirt versus a yellow cotton t-shirt. Those will still share reviews as it's essentially the same shirt sharing the same style just in different colors. A ladder shelf in three tier versus five tier or queen bedding versus king bedding still shared as it's the same function just different size or shape. Multiack of cleaning cloths versus single pack is still shared because it's the same product in different amounts. And if the scent is not the main product feature, as we're talking about a cleaning spray, a blueberry cleaning spray versus a raspberry cleaning spray, then those reviews will be shared. An iPhone case designed to fit model 12 and 14 shared. However, an iPhone case versus an Android, no. A different fit type, varying material change, and performance specs lends itself to separate review pools. So products with difference in performance in power like varying rams platform capabilities, Xbox versus PlayStation, different flavors, chocolate versus vanilla protein shakes, clothing with different fits or special size types like slim fit versus regular fit, different material compositions, cotton versus polyester, and items where the scent is the key buying factor, say in a perfume or candle, then then my friends, those reviews will not be shared. So hopefully this is all making sense. There are some additional things and I would really just recommend that you actually go to seller central's news page and check out those additional details for yourself. This is all to say remember guys this is not Amazon trying to punish sellers. It's not intended to be a review wipeout but rather just redistribute those reviews to more accurately more accurately reflect the ecosystem. I am jumbling my words up. All right. Amazon is just trying to make sure that customers see feedback that actually applies to the specific products that they're buying, which in theory should increase trust and reduce returns. The rollout is gradual by category. Sellers like me, like you should see a 30-day warning in our emails before any changes affect our products. And if our variations are structured correctly, then eligible reviews can just reshare once those attributes are fixed. I repeat, not review Armageddon. Just me telling you guys to keep your eyes peeled for additional information. Okay, next up. MCF has always been powerful, but for sellers, it can get expensive, especially for any of us who have expanded out to sell on other platforms while utilizing Amazon's fulfillment system. So, starting January 15th, in just a few days, MCF preferred pricing goes into effect, which gives eligible sellers discounted MCF shipping plus FBA credits back onto every unit shipped. This is Amazon's way of directly addressing one of the biggest reasons that sellers hesitate to use MCF for Shopify or for Tik Tok or for their own DTOC sites. So, who exactly is eligible? Great question. Amazon structured this in a way that rewards sellers who actually move volume. The program has two tracks. So, first we've got a six-month track which is aimed at new or light MCF users, including sellers enrolled in the MCF new seller incentive program. sellers who just turned on an MCF API integration or or established FBA sellers shipping strong FBA volume but relatively low MCF volume. So that group can get a flat 15% discount on MCF fees plus $1 per unit back in FBA credits capped at 50K. $50,000 you guys. In other words, Amazon's paying you to test MCF. That's how I like to think of it. Anyways, then there's the 12-month preferred pricing tier, which scales based on how much MCF volume you ship. If you ship more units, you unlock higher discounts and higher FBA credits. At the top end, over 19,000 MCF units in a rolling 12week window. You're going to get the full 15% discount and $1 per unit credit. Even lower tiers still get meaningful savings. And then these benefits can last up to 12 months or 100,000 units, whichever comes first. Guys, the key thing that sellers need to understand here is that this isn't automatic for everyone. Amazon will notify eligible sellers in January through email and then seller central enrollment opens January 15th. Some sellers will be autoenrolled while others will need an invitation and then those discounts will kick in about 24 hours after enrollment and apply to both standard expedited MCF shipping. Credits get deposited weekly and automatically offset your FBA fees. So, talk about some real money back. We love that Amazon wants your FBA inventory to have the capability to power everything, not just Amazon orders. And this pricing change moves towards attempting to help sellers remove one of the biggest roadblocks when you're comparing MCF to third party logistics providers. So, if you've written off MCF in the past because of cost, then this is your sign to rerun the numbers. Okay. Next, let me bring on Carrie for a bit to talk about a tool that is completely unique to Helium 10. that is going to be the automatic keyword harvesting. She's going to show you how you can set it and forget it and simply get notified if and when new keywords come up that hit your criteria. Over to you, Carrie. Did you know that only Helium 10 has an automatic keyword harvesting tool? This is a feature that's completely unique to Helium 10 and it can save you a ton of time while helping you uncover valuable keywords you might otherwise miss. Now, the traditional keyword research methods still work, of course. Maybe like for example once a week, every other week or once a month you go into Cerebro and manually enter your competitors one by one and you look to see, you know, where they're showing up in the sponsored or organic placements for any new keywords on page one that maybe you're not even tracking or ranking for yet. Another strategy is if you're a soloreneur or have a virtual assistant, you could go through all 10 of your competitors on a regular basis and compare the results to make sure that they aren't generating any sales from keywords that you might not have discovered. Now, this was and is still a very solid strategy, but let's be honest, it's super timeconuming. That's why Helium 10 introduced automatic keyword harvesting. We've built two simple ways to completely automate this process so you can just set it once and get notified whenever new keywords meet your specific criteria. So, I'm going to go ahead and show you how this works on Helium 10. So, the first thing you want to do is obviously log into Helium 10. And this is our dashboard. So, this is the first way that we're going to be able to do this keyword harvesting. And you need a diamond plan for this. Now, I'm going to also show you a way to do this if you are on the platinum plan as well because you can do it with uh both plans but maybe in just a different area. So, this is for the diamond plan. And what you're going to do is you're going to first go to competitors. Okay. You want to make sure that you have added your competitors in your insights dashboard or basically your top competitors here because you won't be able to harvest keywords unless you've specified which keywords uh basically which competitors you have that you want to take a look at their keywords. The next thing you want to do is you want to go down to the very bottom where it says insights settings and this is where you are going to create your rules. Okay, so we're going to hit create new insight and then you're going to go down to keyword. This is where you can either choose based on your own competitors or your products. So if you wanted to get keyword suggestions based on your competitors, you can choose that one and then you can go down here. You can either specify a specific product or all products and then you set it up here. So, I'm going to say I want to see keywords that have at least 500 search volume. My product rank is, you know, 40 to 100. Okay? And I want to see where my competitors um are ranking for keywords where at least one of my competitors um has the organic rank between 1 and let's do 39 here um just to see where we're missing. And then you're going to need to name the insight. So, competitor keywords and then you can hit create insight. and then it'll basically create those insights for you. Now, if you want to see where those actual insights are, um you can actually see this on the dashboard here where it says it's going to give give you these suggestions. Now, let's go back and I'm going to show you how to do the other way. So, what we're going to do is we're going to go to insight settings again, create new insight, and then we're going to go back to keywords. And I'm going to do based on my own products. Okay? So, maybe you are you start to rank for a product and you're maybe unaware of it, but it might be a good product you're getting sales on. So you want to track it and make sure you maintain your rank. So I want to see keywords where the search volume is a minimum minimum of 500 and then the organic rank is between 1 and 10. And that is basically going to say hey these are keywords where you're ranking but you're not tracking this keyword yet. Um and then you can go ahead and create that insight again just like I showed you before. Now the second way to do this is in another tool called keyword tracker and this is one of our best tools. Um, and it basically helps you to, you know, track your keywords on a consistent basis. So, if you have a platinum account, this is available to you, platinum and above, platinum, diamond, elite. And what you're going to do is you're going to go down here. You got to make sure that you have competitors listed, of course, in this particular section. And then what you're going to do is you're going to go to the suggested keywords section, and you're going to hit customize settings. And this is where you can basically do the same exact thing that I was showing you before. And it's basically, you know, going to show you all of those keyword suggestions just like I showed you on Insights dashboard. And you can either decide to start tracking them or not. So why does this matter? Well, because this feature is exclusive to Helium 10. So sure, you can still do this manually within Cerebro, but the real competitive advantage is going from spending, you know, 30 minutes plus every, you know, few weeks to zero minutes because it's all done for you automatically. And it's easy to see how this can really lead to results. You're uncovering new keywords your competitors are ranking for and generating sales from, and you're getting the chance to compete for those same terms. So, make sure automatic keyword harvesting is turned on for as many of your products as possible inside Helium 10. It's one of the simplest ways to drive more traffic and sales with less effort. So, there you go. You can quickly access keyword suggestions based on your competitors or your products by creating the specific kind of insight that you want and then setting those thresholds. So, be sure that you've got this on and keep the pulse directly from your dashboard. What else have we got in store today? Of course, we've all developed an interest in AI lately. And if you've tuned into previous weekly buzzes, then you know Amazon rolled out a new AIdriven shopping feature called Shop Direct alongside a buy forme button. And it's supposed to allow customers to purchase products from other retailer websites without ever leaving Amazon. Well, those same Amazon's AI shopping tools are already sparking some backlash. Here's why. On paper, Amazon says this helps shoppers find products that are not sold on Amazon while effectively helping brands reach new customers. In reality, some online retailers are furious because their products were scraped, listed, and sold through Amazon without their consent. Amazon's buy from me feature essentially uses an AI agent to purchase items on a customer's behalf and the shopper clicks buy from me on Amazon. The AI places the order elsewhere and then the brand fulfills it. The issue is now that many retailers say they never opted in and they didn't even know they were part of the program and in some cases they were receiving orders for products that they didn't even sell or that were out of stock. Check this out right here behind my head. if you're watching this on video. Sounds like a great program until the agentic AI starts selling customers things that you don't have all while your shop has no idea it's sending the wrong items to the customers. This quote that I just read is from Hitchcock Paper and they discovered that they were part of the program when they began receiving orders for a stress ball product which it doesn't even sell from a buy forme. Amazon email address. This was a product that they never even carried. Another retailer said it felt like they were being forced to be drop shippers on a platform that they had made a conscious decision not to be a part of. Since then, more than 180 businesses selling through platforms like Shopify, Squaresape, Squarespace, Woo Commerce, and Wix have reportedly shared similar experiences. Amazon says businesses can opt out at any time by emailing branddirect.com. And when you email them, those listings are removed quickly once requested. All right, so it is up to you. The company also says that the system pulls pricing and inventory data from public information on a brand's website and then checks availability before placing orders. Amazon's emphasized that buy from me is still an experiment. It does not currently take a commission on those purchases. This is part of Amazon's broader push into agentic commerce where AI does the shopping for you. And as a seller, you're going to want to ensure that if you are receiving orders, they are only for products that you have in stock or desire to sell. And if not, consider emailing them. Then we've got Walmart, who is actively testing ads inside of Sparky. It's Gen AI shopping assistant, opening up sponsored placements right inside AIdriven product recommendations. When shoppers ask Sparky what to buy, advertisers can now show up as sponsored prompts, turning AI search into the next paid media service. Sparky lives inside Walmart's app and is already heavily used. Walmart says 81% of customers have used it to look up product details or availability before purchasing. And search is the most popular use case for Sparky. Walmart's doing what any other retailer chasing dollars would do. I get it. If shoppers are asking AI what to buy, brands want to be the answer. And this really puts Walmart directly headto-head with Amazon, whose Gen AI shopping agent, Rufus, has already been running ads since 2024. All right, Walmart is leaning hard into the fact that it sees 150 million weekly shoppers across stores and online, and it wants advertisers experimenting early before this becomes crowded and expensive. Behind the scenes, Walmart's also going deeper on automation. Its AI super agent Marty is now rolling out tools that can actively manage sponsored search campaigns, analyze bidding and keywords, and generate performance reports like share a voice. Walmart says that 97% of Marty queries are unique, which tells you that advertisers are already using AI to replace manual campaign management. So, here's where I ask you, are you learning how to show up early inside of these agents? because people on the front on the cusp of this are going to have a massive advantage. All right, I've been talking for a while now. Let me pass it over to Bradley for this week's new feature alert. >> All right, guys. A couple updates for Cerebro. And this is right now just for elite members, but it's going to Diamond and Platinum real soon. We've basically combined our two keyword research tools, Cerebro and Magnet, is now together for elite members in a new tool that's just called Cerebro. All right. So, we'd like to get feedback from elite members, but how you use it is just the same way as always. Like, let's say I want to see for a single uh product how many keywords uh this my coffin shelf is ranking for. I can just go ahead and paste that coffin shelf in and then hit get keywords. Now, what's going to happen is it's going to detect that I am searching for an as because I pasted an as. But I could have put in keywords and I'll show you what happens when uh you put keywords in here. But if you put an AS into Cerebro, it will tell you all of the keywords that this product is ranking for. And everything here is going to be the same. All the columns are pretty much the same. There's like a couple added uh things here and there uh for, you know, where the filters are and a couple new AI filters. But basically, your your Cerebro experience is not going to change too much. You've got the historical trend if you have the diamond uh plan. But what if you wanted to go in and say, you know what, I was looking for something that I used to use magnet for. So, if I just wanted to type in a keyword uh right here under find keywords, if I hit analyze keywords, this is the old magnet uh function where I can just, you know, see information about one keyword uh or multiple keywords. But under find keywords, I can type in coffin shelf and it's going to know that I'm searching for a keyword instead of an as. All right. And so, sure enough, if I typed in coffin shelf in the same tool again, I don't have to go into magnet anymore. right here in Cerebro. All of the keywords related to coffin shelf are going to show up here. So, I can now enter an as or a keyword into uh Cerebro. Uh what if I'm searching for one new feature? If I'm searching multiple asens, uh as you guys know, the the first as you put is what we call the seed as or the main as and that's what all of the other products uh are compared to like you know, relative rank and things like that. Um you know, the competitor rank average. It's taking the ranks of all of the other asens compared to the seed as but let's say you know what I want to see how all of these other products relate to a different product and so I can actually go ahead and star and it'll put a different product as the seed as and then once I do that I just hit get keywords and now it is going to go ahead and uh show me all of the rankings and things relative to the new seed. seed as. So that's something that's net new that you couldn't do with Cerebro before. So as you can see here, there's a new seed as that everything else is compared to. But that's about it, guys. There's a few new things uh here and there, but the main thing is for elite members. You guys have first crack at Cerebro and Magnet are now combined into one really super powerful keyword research tools. And for the rest of you guys, you guys will see this uh in the next few weeks. Back to you, Shioali. >> Thank you, Bradley. There you have it. We've combined your two main keyword tools inside of Helium 10 into one place to help make life a little bit easier. And last but not least, if you sell to Amazon business customers, Amazon's now rolled out new B2B specific metrics inside of seller central, giving sellers much clearer visibility into how Amazon business customers actually behave. This matters because B2B buyers do not act like regular consumers. And until now, most sellers were flying blind when it came to returns, feedbacks, and claims from business customers, which is why Amazon has dedicated metrics for it now, including refund rate, units refunded, which tracks how often Amazon business customers submit returns and receive negative feedback received B2B, feedback received for B2B, and received negative feedback rate, which monitors business customer satisfaction. So you can make updates to B2B product descriptions on your bulk fulfillment process plus Amazon business specific a toz claims and claim amounts. All of this lives inside of business reports under B2B dashboard view. And the goal here is to help sellers understand which products work better for business buyers where issues are happening and where listings or bulk fulfillment strategies need tightening. So, if you're offering business pricing, case packs, or bulk options, then these metrics now give you the ability to swap patterns that were previously buried. Higher return rates on certain pack sizes, more claims coming from specific regions, and negative feedback tied to fulfillment expectations rather than product quality. This will hopefully let you fix the right problems instead of just having to sit there and guess. This also ties directly into what we've been talking about on the Serious Sellers podcast. So recently on Serial Sellers podcast episode 728, we had Brian on who broke down how Amazon business became a really meaningful lever, a growth lever for his 8 figureure operation through simple moves like business pricing, case packs, and then treating B2B as a system, not just something to think about later. And in episode 729 of Serial Sellers podcast, Andrew Angel shared how Amazon business drives roughly 30% of his revenue by separating B2B campaigns and then dialing in on pricing rules and protecting profitability even as fees and tariffs are rising. So if you are already enrolled in Amazon business, I'd go check out these reports. And if not, then this is a reminder that it can be something for you to take a look at. It's not just for massive brands. But it's also a way for you to consider stabilizing revenue, improving your margins, and reducing volatility in 2026. With that, we are all wrapped up. I'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.