Badges acknowledge and encourage expert contributors to provide helpful product reviews and answers.

Note: Badges associated with a user's profile, such as affiliation, rank, and top contributor, will show up on any reviews written by that user. Badges will also show up on any comments left by that user, including comments on other users' reviews.

Badges add credibility to your product reviews. Use them to call attention to:

  • Top content contributors
  • Experts who know a product or service
  • Reviews that were verified as written by someone who purchased the product or service
  • Reviews written by someone who received the product or service for free in exchange for a review (an incentivized review)

Learn about the following:

Types of badges

Badges are typically configured with an image, image hover text, and a badge description.

The following table describes the various badge categories and types:

Badge Description Additional information
Affiliation Indicates the contributor has an affiliation with or is employed by the product or retail organization. The only affiliation badge is Staff.
Featured Draws the consumer's attention to a featured review on your website. These badges are assigned differently than the other badges in this list.
Merit Shows the quantity and helpfulness of contributors’ content submissions. These badges are automatically calculated and applied daily.
  • Top Contributor-Indicates the top contributor of useful content.
  • Top 10 Contributor-One of the top 10 contributors of useful content.
  • Top 25 Contributor-One of the top 25 contributors of useful content.
  • Top 50 Contributor-One of the top 50 contributors of useful content.
  • Top 100 Contributor-One of the top 100 contributors of useful content.
  • Top 250 Contributor-One of the top 250 contributors of useful content.
  • Top 500 Contributor-One of the top 500 contributors of useful content.
  • Top 1000 Contributor-IOne of the top 1000 contributors of useful content.
Token-based Provides a way to automatically assign a badge to a contributor or review based on data that is injected into the submission form. Token-based badges establish that the contributor’s review is authentic which increases consumer trust.

By default, two token-based badges are provided:

  • Verified Purchaser-The contributor purchased the product and/or service from your website.
  • Incentivized Review-The contributor received a free product or service for submitting a review. Possible incentives include entry into a sweepstake, coupons or discounts, loyalty reward points, and free products. Refer to incentivized reviews and badges for additional information.
Response-based Provides a way to automatically assign a badge to a contributor or review based on the answer to a submission form question. A response-based badge indicates that the person responded in a specific way to a product question on a submission form.
Rank Indicates a specific level of expertise or experience the contributor has with your products or services. There is one type of rank badge, Expert, which indicates that the person has a high level of expertise or experience with your products or services.
Syndicated review Indicates that the review was syndicated from another source within the Bazaarvoice network. For example, a consumer might write a review of a product on the website for that product's manufacturer. That review could then be shared with retailers that sell the product. This badge is applied automatically by Bazaarvoice and cannot be disabled.
Product contextual This badge indicates that a user is verified to write a specialized type of review on a given product or category. These badges are associated with data gathered through the Bazaarvoice submission form. This is a special custom expert badge.

Badge display order

When a review has multiple badges, the badges are displayed in this ranking order:

  1. Incentivized review (token-based badge)
  2. Verified purchaser (token-based badge)
  3. Featured
  4. Staff (affiliation badge)
  5. Top contributor
  6. Expert (rank badge)
  7. Response-based
  8. Product context (custom badge)

Badge styling

PRR badges have a default styling based on Bazaarvoices default templates. However, using CSS the badge image, image hover text, and badge description can be customized to suit your preferences.

Valid image types are PNG, GIF, or JPG. Badge images must be a minimum of 50px in height (maximum of 100px) and have a minimum width-to-height ratio of 1:1 (maximum 6:1). The badge will display on the submission form at 25px high for retina display.

Contact Bazaarvoice Support for badge styling.

Enable badges

To enable badging, contact Bazaarvoice Support . Open a case and specify whether you want to display an actual graphic badge or if you want to display the context data value.

  • Your Support representative will set expectations and route the case to the client delivery team for scoping.
  • The Bazaarvoice implementation team will set up badging.
  • You should test badging against your staging environment before going live.
  • Once reviews start to come in, you can confirm that the correct badges have been assigned and are displayed correctly on your site.

Merit (top contributor) badge

The Merit is the most commonly used badge. It indicates the quantity and helpfulness of contributors’ content submissions.

These badges are automatically calculated and applied daily.

Assign merit (top contributor) badges

Awarding merit (top contributor) badges is handled dynamically by Bazaarvoice (using a formula) and requires no management from your side.

To maintain the prestige of the merit (top contributor) badges, Bazaarvoice assigns badges as a client’s distinct contributor population grows. The system has been deliberately designed to assign a merit badge to no more than 20% of a site’s contributor population.

An individual contributor must provide at least two approved contributions, such as some combination of reviews and answer items, to qualify for a merit badge.

Note: You can configure the minimum contribution threshold.

The merit formula runs every night and updates based on activity published in the last 24 hours.

Due to a conflict of interest, no Staff contributor, is eligible for a merit badge.

Caution: The merit badge formula is based on the number of approved reviews, approved answers, approved campaign content, and the helpfulness votes received. To avoid abuse, it is recommended you keep the exact formula hidden from end users.

Design merit (top contributor) badges

Merit badge design may be customized for your website. Contact Bazaarvoice Support to request a custom badge design.

Sort merit (top contributor) badges

Merit badges typically display along side other badges in a review, question, answer, or campaign display. The default order before sorting is:

  • Inbound syndication status
  • Featured content contributions
  • Merit rank (Top contributors)
  • Submission time

Consumers have the option to sort badges into this order:

  • Top contributors (Merit rank). This option will re-sort content first by merit rank, highest rank first
  • Inbound syndication status (not syndicated first)
  • Featured content contributions
  • Submission time (newest first)

Configure merit (top contributor) badges

PRR badges are configured through xml changes to your PRR code base. Use the following configuration options:

  • Enabling/disabling merit badging
  • Branding badge designs
  • Separately disabling merit sorting
  • Increasing or decreasing the minimum review/answer threshold
  • Hiding badges. If you want to artificially limit merit badges to Top 10 (for instance), you can request to restyle or hide the lower badges (Top 25 and beyond)
Note: Contact Bazaarvoice Support to request any of these configuration options.

Remove merit (top contributor) status

Use the Modify Contributor Roles tool in Workbench to remove merit (top contributor) status for a contributor.

  1. Go to Workbench > User Settings > Modify Contributor Roles.
  2. Select All from the Merit Badge Eligibility drop-down.
  3. Select Search. A list of eligible contributors is displayed. Refer to the column labeled Merit Badge Eligible.
  4. Identify the contributor you want to opt out.
  5. Select user ID to view the Contributor Settings page.
  6. Modify the badge settings for the specified contributor.

All contributors are eligible for merit badge status. Yes is the default setting for this badge type. Change the merit badge setting to No to remove merit badge status, regardless of overall contribution volume and helpfulness.