How can I get review-rank in the Amazon Product Advertising API?

Asked 2/1, 2012 at 12:32 Answered 26/3, 2014 at 17:29

Solved amazon-web-services amazon-product-api

Using the Amazon API it seems that it's not possible anymore to get the review rank information of a product. Checking this link the note says:

As of November 8, 2010, only the iframe URL is returned in the request content.

However, testing with the params they suggest to get the Iframe, but it seems that now even the Iframe doesn't work anymore. Thus, even in the latest API Reference in the chapter "Motivating Customers to Buy" the part "reviews" is completely missing.

However: Since I'm also very interested if it's still possible somehow to get the review rank information - maybe even not using the Amazon API but a competitor's API to get review rank information - I hope someone can provide something helpful on this topic.

Annabell answered 2/1, 2012 at 12:32 Comment(2)

See also this thread started 31 Dec 2011 in AWS discussion forums forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=83878&tstart=0 It confirms what you described. Maybe watch that thread feed? Probably won't be any posts about competitor APIs on an Amazon site. Maybe something else that can help you though, I hope... – Hoisch 2/1, 2012 at 13:17

Here is their statement where they notify their intention to remove ratings. affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/… Select elements from the Offers response group are being removed: Total Feedback Pages, Total Feedback, Average Rating – Chimere 29/3, 2015 at 0:39

Preamble: I'm not sure that I understand exactly what you are looking for here but I'll share my findings anyways.

I was able to retrieve the iframe URL for the reviews and was able to see the reviews iframe after embedding it into an .html page. I used the following attributes to retrieve the iframe URL:

Operation=ItemLookup&
ItemId=1451648537&
ResponseGroup=Reviews&
TruncateReviewsAt="256"&
IncludeReviewsSummary="False"&
Version=2011-08-01                 <= important: can't be less than this version
AssociateTag=<YourAssociateTag>    <= required when using this version, can be anything (not verified by Amazon)

The relevant part of the response:

<Item>
    <ASIN>1451648537</ASIN>
    <CustomerReviews>
        <IFrameURL>http://www.amazon.com/reviews/iframe?akid=<YourAmazonKey>&amp;alinkCode=xm2&amp;asin=1451648537&amp;atag=<YourAssociateTag>&amp;exp=2012-01-06T02%3A10%3A38Z&amp;summary=0&amp;truncate=256&amp;v=2&amp;sig=kjWPue1N75%2FiI1hW67XYApWxnKeT2tlT%2FJ1rw4WLlUo%3D</IFrameURL>
        <HasReviews>true</HasReviews>
    </CustomerReviews>
</Item>

Note that you will not be able to use this iframe URL due to the fact that (1) I've removed my Amazon Key and the Associate Tag that was used to create the signature and (2) it expires 24 hours after the call.

If you use the same attributes that I've used, paying close attention to the Version and AssociateTag fields, you will get a result with an iframe URL included.

I then embedded the url in an iframe:

<html>
    <body>
        <iframe src="http://www.amazon.com/reviews/iframe?akid=<YourAmazonKey>&amp;alinkCode=xm2&amp;asin=1451648537&amp;atag=<YourAssociateTag>&amp;exp=2012-01-06T02%3A10%3A38Z&amp;summary=0&amp;truncate=256&amp;v=2&amp;sig=kjWPue1N75%2FiI1hW67XYApWxnKeT2tlT%2FJ1rw4WLlUo%3D"/>
    </body>
</html>

Which looked like the following:

Amazon Review IFrame

As I said in the preamble, I'm unsure if this is what you are looking for since the requirements for the bounty was:

...to get access to amazons reviewrank informations

This isn't exactly the review rank information but the actual reviews and I take the meaning of review rank info to be more along the lines of the data itself (such as 100 reviews @ 4 stars etc.). However, in your question you stated that the iframe did not work:

However, testing with the params they suggest to get the Iframe, but it seems that now even the Iframe doesn't work anymore.

So I thought that I would at least provide you with the proper method of getting and using the iframe.

Dahle answered 5/1, 2012 at 2:55 Comment(4)

Yup, that definitly helps. Since i -->also<-- had troubles getting the IFrame. Still, my main goal (and what the bounty is set for) is to get the (isolated) reviewrank information described as "Average customer review"[..](for a specific product) in older API documentations (yet removed since outdated). I just need a way to get that number of avarage product stars (1-5) somehow. – Annabell 5/1, 2012 at 11:21

using IncludeReviewsSummary="True" i was able to get back a IFrame includeing the avarage product rating. But still: its a IFrame, i would have to screen scrape the returned IFrame to get the information. Thats not what i wanted, since as we all know screen scraping is fragile to errors and would need continous updateing to ensure it still works and the IFrame wasn't changed somehow. – Annabell 5/1, 2012 at 11:37

Glad I could help. Amazon removed any ability to get the kind of info that you're looking for. So, the only answers that you'll get to that question are the ones that you don't want to hear. – Dahle 5/1, 2012 at 16:30

To see a real world use of Amazon iframed reviews, check out shopireland. They make extensive use of it. – Delaney 24/11, 2015 at 4:5

I know you said you don't want to screen scrape, but as that is the only solution available, I have been using the screen scraping solution for some time and it has not caused me a problem yet, although I agree it is fragile. If my screen scraping code does not get what it expects, it will log an error for me to adjust the code, and it will degrade gracefully to just display a link to open the review information in an iFrame. This error has yet to trigger and the solution has worked great for us.

Brendonbrenk answered 15/10, 2012 at 14:45 Comment(0)

Amazon has completely removed support for accessing rating/review information from their API. The docs mention a Response Element in the form of customer rating, but that doesn't work either.

Google shopping using Viewpoints for some reviews. I came across a good article for this

Philan answered 26/3, 2014 at 17:29 Comment(0)

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