Moderation

The outcome of the Bazaarvoice moderation process for your user-generated content (UGC) is visible in the following Manage Content solutions:

• Ratings & Reviews in Portal
• Questions & Answers in Portal

Use these solutions to see whether your content was approved or rejected and the reasons provided by the moderators.

Moderation process

All user-generated content (UGC) submitted through your site goes through a rigorous moderation process.

• Content is initially reviewed by a sophisticated Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool. If the NLP tool is highly confident that the content aligns with brand criteria, the content is automatically approved and published.
• If the content needs an additional review, the NLP tool will pass it on to Bazaarvoice human moderators, who will read and tag content for approval, rejection, or review.

The following flow chart shows the content moderation process:

• You can configure Ratings & Reviews to alert a consumer when they enter profanity in a submission form. Refer to Enable profanity moderation for details.

• If a review is rejected by a moderator, the contributor receives an email notification but the message lacks an explanation by default. You can configure review resubmission to include moderators' reasons in the email message to the consumer.

• Moderation guidelines for seller ratings require seller reviews to review the seller or shopping experience, not the product. Google requires following these guidelines when sharing content with it. In addition, note these important points:

  • The guidelines have been approved for use by Google and cannot be altered, unlike product reviews content moderation guidelines.
  • Your employees cannot leave a seller rating for your company.
  • The guidelines cannot be customized.
  • Any review that includes a price reference will be rejected. Seller ratings must be about the company as a whole, not specific products or prices.

Rejection codes

To reject a review, a moderator tags the content with one or more of the following rejection codes. Rejection codes are categorized as editable or non-editable:

• Editable—Moderators use editable codes when a review contains useful content but also includes some forbidden information, such as a competitor's name or inappropriate media. When a review is tagged with one of these codes, the contributor receives an email with an editable copy of the original review and a submission link. The email lists the reasons for rejection and highlights them in the review text. The contributor can edit the review and resubmit it for moderation.

  Here are the editable codes:

  

  Note: Not all codes are available for all clients/situations.
  
  

  Code	Description	Code	Description
  CR	Review contains references to competitors	PRI	Review mentions the price of the product
  IMG	Review includes inappropriate images	*SI	Review includes shipping or fulfillment details
  MSR	The star rating does not align with the review content	VAC	The content of the review is irrelevant or lacks substance
  PII	Review contains personally identifying information (PII)

• Non-editable—Moderators use non-editable codes when a review lacks useful content, such as a duplicate or spam review. When a review is tagged with one of these codes, the contributor receives an email with an empty review form and a submission link. The contributor can then choose to submit a new review.

  Here are the non-editable codes:

  Code	Description	Code	Description
  FL	Review contains foreign language	SPM	Review appears to be a duplicate or spam
  GIU	Review includes inappropriate or unsuitable content	PUX	Review lacks personal experience
  LI	Review contains legally sensitive information	WP	The content of the review refers to a different product
  *CS	Review mentions customer service details	SAI	Review contains suspected AI-generated content. Refer to AI detection guidelines.

Note: Due to region-specific consumer protection regulations, *CS and *SI are not available as review rejection codes for client instances with locales in the US or France. 

France legal compliance: *CS/*SI moderation

To comply with French consumer law (effective July 9, 2024), reviews on French-facing sites can no longer be rejected as "irrelevant" if they focus on Customer Service (CS) or Shipping/Delivery (SI).

• Moderation policy: Content focused on these areas will now be Approved & Published locally on the client's site.
• Insight tagging: Reviews mentioning a shipping or customer service issue will be tagged with codes CSN or NSI instead. These codes can be used to power alerts or reports to notify internal teams for appropriate actions.
• Syndication: These reviews will not syndicate to other sites in the network, as they are considered specific to the local experience.
• Retroactive changes: Bazaarvoice is working to re-publish relevant reviews collected since July 9, 2024, that were previously rejected under old guidelines.

Note: Content that fails other moderation standards (e.g., obscenity), will still be rejected and will not be published or syndicated in the Network.

Review resubmission

To help contributors understand a rejection, use the review resubmission feature. The Review resubmission feature is a tool designed to turn a "rejected review" into a "corrected review" rather than losing the customer's feedback entirely. This feature ensures the moderator's specific rejection reasons are included in the notification email, encouraging the user to edit and resubmit their content.

Syndication stop codes

In addition to the general syndication guidelines, Bazaarvoice Content Network has defined additional guidelines for syndication. For example, some content may be syndicated for the sender, but not for the recipient. References to price, customer service, shipping/delivery, or the location of purchase that appear in multiple locations may create confusion or introduce friction, and therefore are not allowed to be syndicated.

Authenticity codes

The Bazaarvoice Authenticity team uses sophisticated tools and systems to detect suspicious content. These authenticity processes allow the team to reject content identified as fraudulent or non-compliant with the Bazaarvoice Authenticity Policy.

You cannot edit authenticity codes yourself. If content has been rejected, only our Authenticity team can reverse that decision.

Note: If you have questions about rejected content, contact Bazaarvoice support to submit a support case. Questioning a decision does not guarantee the Authenticity team will approve the content.

Content rejected by the Authenticity team will be marked with the following codes:

Parent code	Code	POL codes	Description
AUTH			The Authenticity team has rejected content Note: The AUTH code will appear on all content that is rejected for any reason by the Authenticity team.
	NBD (legacy)		Review needs a badge to disclose relevant information to consumers
	FRD		Content is rejected due to fraud concerns
	POL		Content is rejected for violating Bazaarvoice policy Note: Content with this code will also have one of the following specific policy violation codes.
		DATA	Review is missing required authenticity data in accordance with Bazaarvoice contractual obligations
		DUP	Multiple reviews for a single product by a unique user
		INCENT	Incentivized review is missing the required incentivised disclosure badge
		STAFF	Staff review is missing the required staff disclosure badge
		SPAM	Review content is spam or was submitted from a restricted or sanctioned country
		SPEC	Reserved for rare, non-standard rejections that do not fall under existing fraud or specific policy codes
		PTEST	Test content submitted in the production environment

Client codes

We use client codes to indicate client events that impact the content (for example, a review that the client has re-moderated).

Determine why content was rejected

Bazaarvoice moderators typically reject content that is either inappropriate or goes against review submission guidelines. From time to time, you may occasionally review Bazaarvoice-moderated content and find content we've rejected that you want to remoderate.

To understand why the content was rejected:

1. Sign in to the Bazaarvoice Portal.
2. From the navigation bar, select Ratings & Reviews.
3. To find rejected content, select the Moderation filter.
4. From the drop-down list, select Moderation Status, and then select Rejected.
5. Select Apply and close. The page refreshes to display a list of rejected reviews.
6. Scroll through the list of rejected reviews.
7. If a review appears that has been rejected incorrectly, select either the review title or View details to open it.
8. Read the review text and view any included visual content.
   
   
   
   

   Note: In the panel to the right of the review content, you can view moderation codes detailing why this review was rejected.
9. Select Approve to approve the review for publication.
   

   Note: The Approved by Client (ABC) moderation code is applied and locked automatically to show that you approved the review. Once applied, this code will be permanently displayed with the review in Ratings & Reviews.
10. (Optional) Add an internal note to share why you thought this review required remoderation.

Note: To approve or reject reviews, you must be assigned the role of Account Administrator, Content Administrator, or Content Moderator. Learn more about Portal roles and permissions.

Content authenticity and AI detection guidelines

To ensure your product reviews remain authentic and trusted, our moderators use the Suspect AI-generated content (SAI) code to reject reviews that don't show genuine "proof of life." 

We evaluate submissions against several key authenticity markers, including:

• Residual AI prompts: We identify text that accidentally includes AI command remnants, such as "Write a 50-word review about..."
• Marketing-speak versus experience: We flag content that reads like a brochure, for example reviews using terms like "unparalleled performance" rather than a personal experience like "the lid was hard to open". 
• Structure: We watch for the predictable "intro–bullet points–conclusion" pattern that is common in generative AI output but rare in organic feedback.
• Robotic cues: While a human might say a product is "great," an AI is more likely to use professional jargon like "seamless experience" or "cutting-edge aesthetics" .

Enable profanity moderation

You can alert a consumer when they enter profanity in a submission form on your product page. The consumer cannot submit the content until the profanity is removed.

Contact Bazaarvoice support   to enable profanity moderation.

Before beginning, consider these best practices:

• Be thoughtful before removing a word from the profanity list. After you remove a word, it is no longer disallowed and the word might show up on your site.
• When adding a word to a list, consider benign uses of the word and how consumers might use the word.
• If you have optimistic publishing enabled, which is a configuration option for Questions & Answers, keep in mind that the list might affect what shows up on your site before moderation.

Note: After you enable profanity moderation, existing content is not remoderated. If content exists that includes a word that is now prohibited, the word remains in the review or question.

Enable optimistic publishing

Optimistic publishing provides a way to simultaneously display UGC on your site as soon as it is submitted and submit the content to Bazaarvoice moderation for insight and appropriateness tagging. This means consumers' UGC is published right away, and product display pages (PDP) are populated immediately with dynamic content for improved SEO. The content is also submitted for human moderation, which vets content for unrelated remarks, inflammatory or vitriolic statements, and non-compliant content.

Though a certain level of risk exists when publishing UGC prior to human moderation, all UGC is scanned for profanity and inappropriate slang before content is accepted and published. Content that ultimately fails Bazaarvoice moderation is removed from your site.

Contact Bazaarvoice support    to enable optimistic publishing.

Configure moderation alerts

Some content may contain sensitive information that needs to be communicated to someone in your organization. For example, content that has been rejected for mentioning a safety issue may need to be sent to your legal department.

Follow these steps to set up rules that will automatically send certain content to specified people or groups:

1. From the Manage Alerts page, select Create alert in the upper-right corner. The Create alert modal appears:
   
   
   

2. Select a Content category. For example, Ratings & Reviews. The relevant alert modal appears.
   
3. Configure alert settings:
   1. Set alert conditions: Select the filter conditions which will trigger your real-time alert. For example, select the LI moderation code which denotes Liability Issue.
      
      

      Note: You must select at least one filter condition. Filters will vary based on the content type you selected.
   2. Alert name: Enter an alert name. For example, "Reviews with liability concerns".
   3. Recipients: Enter email addresses for the Portal users you want to notify when an alert matches the filter criteria.
      
      

      Note: Each recipient must have an active Portal account.

4. Select Create alert. Recipients will receive an alert email whenever content matches the specified filter criteria.

Enable re-moderation

Selecting Report review under a live review on your product page triggers re-moderation by Bazaarvoice human moderators. The review stays live and published unless rejected during re-moderation, at which point it is removed from your site.

Note: The Report review link and Helpfulness voting icons share the same ConfigHub setting. You must enable Review Helpfulness Voting for the Report link to display. 

Follow these steps to enable re-moderation:

1. Sign in to the Bazaarvoice Portal.
2. From the upper-right corner, select the settings icon .
3. Under Configuration, select Ratings & Reviews.
4. Under Implementations, select Edit next to the implementation you want to configure.
5. Select Display Options on the sidebar, and select the Ratings & Reviews tab.
6. Under Review Helpfulness Voting, select Enabled.
   
   

Each review can only go through this re-moderation process once, which is triggered the first time the Report link is selected. To adjust your site's reporting threshold limit, contact Bazaarvoice Support.

Change moderation guidelines

The option to customize your guidelines is dependent on your moderation package.

Should you wish to inquire about eligibility or discuss desired changes, filing a case is the best way to get in touch with us. A moderation specialist will address your request. Follow these steps to file a case:

1. Sign in to the Support Community.
2. Select Open a Case.
3. Select Feature Change Request.
4. Briefly explain your concerns and intended objective.
5. Select Confirm.

COPPA support

For detailed information about COPPA, refer to the following:

• Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998
• Frequently Asked Questions about complying with COPPA

Bazaarvoice gives you the option to block users under any age from contributing content to your sites. Although COPPA protections apply only to children under 13, you can choose to block all users under 18, for example.

Using the following methods, you can design Bazaarvoice content submission forms and profile pages to discourage users from falsifying their age, and to detect and block underage users:

• Implement a neutral age-screening mechanism on the content submission form or profile page where:

  • Users can select an age range, such as 17 or under.
  • No indication or message is displayed that alerts a visitor that they must be 18 years or older to contribute.

• Add a COPPA cookie for users under 18 years old, which recognizes the user agent or IP address and prevents the user from:

  • Using the Back button to enter a different age.
  • Using the same device and browser to sign in at a later time and submit content.

  The cookie persists for 365 days.

Note: The age-screening mechanism is always enabled and is not affected by user authentication or by how a visitor accesses your site. For example, age-screening works the same whether the visitor selects the Write a review link on a retailer site or an email link that opens the review submission form. Bazaarvoice cannot provide you with guidance on COPPA, and in no event should this document be construed as such.