Analyse your reviews and track votes with ARAT

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The advantages and disadvantages of using Amazon

All the software that Amazon uses to display pages is held internally by them, so anybody can log on from any computer, with any type of browser. Unfortunately, Amazon only allow us to look at reviews in a very limited way. We therefore appreciate having other software to go where Amazon refuse to go. However, because Amazon is so easily accessible, let’s look first at what can be done within Amazon’s website; it may be more than you already know.

Within Amazon profiles

All Amazon customers have publicly accessible profile pages that include, where applicable, pages containing that customer’s reviews, lists and guides. Those pages that contain reviews can be somewhat tedious to look through if the customer has hundreds of reviews. There are only two ways that Amazon allow us to sort them, one is all reviews in date written order and the other is reviews with attached comments in date commented order. In both cases, the order is most recent first. Fair enough as far as it goes, but some reviewers want a lot more.

Within Amazon product pages

On any product page containing customer reviews, you’ll find a text box titled Search Customer Reviews in the right-hand margin, below the reviews. Below the box is a check box titled “Only search this product's reviews”. It is automatically displayed with a tick, it being assumed that that’s what most people using the function want. Remove the tick to search reviews on all products. A lot of people will use that search to look for reviews containing particular key words, which is a useful feature that can be used alone or in combination with the other options, which are for customer and star rating.

Put in the word customer followed by a colon, a space and the account number (sometimes called the profile ID) of the reviewer you are looking for. Harriet Klausner’s account number is AFVQZQ8PW0L so if you want to find her reviews, you’d enter customer: AFVQZQ8PW0L . Put in the word rating followed by a colon, a space and the star rating you are looking for, in the range 1 to 5, for example rating: 2 .

So in addition to the options available within a customer’s profile, you can also obtain a breakdown by star rating, although the reviews are displayed in an apparently random order.

Omission of the colon in either case causes Amazon to assume that you want to search for reviews containing the relevant word and whatever follows it; the likelihood is that it won't find anything that matches.

Introduction to ARAT

ARAT (an acronym for Amazon Reviewer Analysis Tool) does not have direct access to Amazon’s internal data, but looks at the code used to display the pages that interest it. This necessarily slows it down, but it is still much quicker than paging through your reviews. You need to download ARAT to a Windows PC, so if you wish to run it at work, you are advised to seek permission to install and run it. It is not my purpose here to describe ARAT in all its detail (though I‘ve included some detail), but to provide enough information to enable you to decide whether to use it, and to get started. For further information beyond what is here, and to download it, go to the developer's website, mentioned later in the section on getting started near the end of this blog post.

ARAT graphs

ARAT produces graphs showing distribution of reviews by star rating (as bar charts) and by review posting date period. It also produces a graph showing your ranking movements, but this only works if you retain historical data.

ARAT main grid

The focal point of ARAT, this grid displays a list of products reviewed with links to both the actual reviews and to their product pages, together with star ratings, dates reviewed, votes totals, tags totals and comment totals, while also indicating which reviews are from the Vine™ system and which reviews carry Amazon Verified Purchase badges. There is an option to also show which reviews are spotlighted, but identifying them slows ARAT down considerably as we’ll see later.

Paging through this table, once generated, is obviously far quicker than paging through Amazon’s review pages, but this grid also has many hidden options.

ARAT grid sort options

ARAT normally displays the data in descending order of review posting date, just as Amazon does within profile review pages, but you can sort by any field you wish simply by clicking on the relevant name in the title row at the top of the grid. One click sorts in ascending order; two clicks sorts in descending order. To sort on multiple key fields, you have to hold down the shift key when selecting the minor fields.

ARAT grid selection filtering options

You can use selection filtering on any number of fields simultaneously. To select on a particular field, again go to the name within the title row at the top of the grid, but click on the little check box in the top right corner. If you require several values or a range of values, choose the (Custom) option at the top, but if you are only interested in a specific value, you may choose from the options provided, scrolling if necessary. Repeat the process for other fields. There is an option (button furthest right immediately above grid) to clear all selection filters, so you can cancel all selections simultaneously rather than resetting each in turn to All.

ARAT unrated purchases

ARAT provides an option to list your unrated purchases, with various options including one that gives you un-reviewed purchases. Because purchases from different Amazon sites are only recorded at the site from which products were bought, those who purchase from and/or review at multiple sites have to be careful. The unrated purchases software only works for Amazon.com just now and fixing it to work for other sites is not a priority. (It might move up the agenda if a significant number of users want it.)

ARAT Vine™ data

Quite apart from indicating Vine™ reviews in the main grid, ARAT provides two special displays (a reviews analysis and a newsletter analysis) for members of USA Vine™, which I am not a member of so cannot see. I am in UK Vine™, but ARAT doesn't cater for that.

My understanding is that one of the analyses is able to tell you how many Vine™ products you are able to accept before posting another Vine™ review. although I believe it errs on the pessimistic side, sticking to a mathematical interpretation of the 75% rule. Whether my theory about Amazon's interpretation of the 75% rule, described in Amazon Vine™, is correct or not, it is clear that a mathematical interpretation is pessimistic. Still, most Vine™ members want to ensure that they stay within the rule, so nobody will fall foul of it if they stick to what ARAT tells them; it's just that ARAT may sometimes underestimate how many more products can be ordered before a review has to be posted. Against that, it is worth reminding people that there is usually a delay in Vine™ reviews being acknowledged by the software that checks the limits. If you get a message saying that you can't any more stuff yet, you may not be able to order anything from Vine™ until a day or two after you submit those reviews.

Not having actually seen these pages within ARAT, I have no idea what else these special displays show.

ARAT gets old review pages

If you page through a prolific reviewer's pages, you'll usually get to a page that Amazon cannot display within the time limit, so it displays an error message as follows.

We're sorry, but this customer's list of reviews is currently not available. Please check back soon.

While most people give up after two or three attempts at displaying such pages, ARAT is more persistent, trying many times if necessary before conceding defeat and going on to the next page.

ARAT detects deleted reviews

When comparing current data with historical data, ARAT makes a note of any reviews it finds in the historical data that are not in the current data. These deleted reviews may simply be ones that it was not able to find because of Amazon not supplying the pages despite trying many times as indicated above. If Amazon doesn’t supply a page, all the reviews will be shown as deleted, so except for the oldest page of reviews, these will always be in blocks of ten consecutive missing reviews.. Apart from those, any deletions that show up have either been deleted by the reviewer, or by Amazon, or by customers using “Report this” in sufficient numbers.

ARAT other output

Apart from the on-screen displays, ARAT generates an XML file and (optionally) an EXCEL spreadsheet file. The XML file doubles up as the historical data file. When you run ARAT again, you have the option to compare the new data with any existing historical data. You can therefore see where new votes and comments have been added in the period between the two runs. The spreadsheet file allows you to load the file into EXCEL and do whatever you wish to do with it.

An Open data folder button on the top right of the main grid page provides easy access to the relevant folders. These folders are accessible without loading ARAT, but that button is a useful feature.

My XML files are huge, so I delete most of the historic files, but I always remember to keep the most recent. I also keep the end-of-year files so that I can compare with previous years, but I copy these to a separate folder to avoid accidentally deleting them. I have to copy the end of year files back again when I need them, but it’s a rare event so I don’t mind.

Getting started

Go to the ARAT website to install ARAT.

IMPORTANT If you are installing ARAT for the first time, use the full installer. If you subsequently upgrade to a new version, use the minimal installer unless you are told otherwise.

Once installed, you should click on Help > Contents for further information, which comes up in a separate window. Go back to the original window and click on File > Preferences to set up the options you want to use, referring back to the help window as necessary. After setting up your preferences, set up your profile ID as explained in “How to …” (link from Welcome page within Help).

You can change the options later, but it’s a good idea to study the options before trying to run anything. In particular, those who review outside the USA should check the Amazon website options, while those who review stuff other than books or who want to identify spotlighted reviews should check the Enable product data option. The latter option slows ARAT down considerably, but remember that you can always change the option between runs.