Syndication guidelines for the Bazaarvoice Network
Bazaarvoice strives to deliver a superlative experience to consumers, enabling them to easily access authentic feedback and content from other consumers, retailers, and brands. Our syndication guidelines apply across a number of industries, including the retailer and supplier ecosystem, travel, financial services, and services. Because retailers and suppliers participate the most in syndication, the majority of examples in the guidelines are for the retail industry and the brands that supply the products offered by retailers.
These guidelines hold true for all industries, with the appropriate adjustment for industry type. They define the general use cases that occur for companies participating in the Bazaarvoice Content Network. It is possible that use cases not currently imagined will occur. In that event, Bazaarvoice will make reasonable business efforts to define new guidelines to address the new use cases in a timely way.
Review syndication enables companies participating in the Bazaarvoice Content Network to collect review content and then share it with other companies that sell or market the same product or services. Bazaarvoice has defined general syndication guidelines to apply across all forms of syndication. In addition, Bazaarvoice has defined additional guidelines that apply to specific types of review syndication. These more specific guidelines override the general syndication guidelines. For example, some of the general syndication guidelines—such as the requirement that a review include information reflecting that it was originally collected elsewhere—apply to all syndication types. However, the standard syndication guidelines provide additional rules for standard syndication, in which brands or suppliers send reviews to retailers.
Syndication types and their more specific guidelines include the following:
- Standard syndication
- Reverse syndication
- Intra-site syndication
General syndication guidelines
Syndication across the Bazaarvoice Content Network is regulated by the following guidelines. Bazaarvoice maintains these guidelines to:
- Maximize the value of the syndication network to our clients and partners
- Meet our obligation of providing an authentic and useful experience to consumers
- Fulfill our commitment to preserving a fair and non-misleading shopping experience
Apart from extraordinary circumstances, failure to comply with these guidelines will result in Bazaarvoice ending the delivery of the syndication service. Exceptions must be approved by the Bazaarvoice Network Syndication Guidelines Committee.
To syndicate content to the Bazaarvoice Content Network, syndication senders and receivers must provide Bazaarvoice with the product information needed to perform product matching. Successful matching is based on common content information being provided by both parties. If only one party provides the needed product information, or if a party provides only partial data, matching will not be successful and syndication will not occur. The product data feed should:
- Be updated regularly. The minimum standard is to provide an updated feed monthly. The best practice is to provide an update daily. The next best option is to provide weekly updates.
- Include all products to be matched.
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Include complete product data, as defined in Bazaarvoice's documentation. Complete product data includes, but is not limited to:
- Brand name. This should be the name of the specific brand of the product, not the name of the manufacturer.
- Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) such as UPCs, EANs, and ISBNs
- Manufacturer part numbers
- Product name
- Product page URL
- Product image URL
