Moderation

Moderation decides when a review goes live. By default, Cevoid publishes each new review as soon as it has analyzed it, unless a hold rule keeps it pending for your team. A held review publishes on its own after 14 days, unless your team publishes or rejects it first.

Navigate to Settings → Reviews → Moderation⁠ to choose what publishes and what waits.

Every review has one moderation status. A product review can also be hidden, which keeps its status but takes it off your store.

When a review comes in, Cevoid analyzes it: its language, sentiment, and credibility, and whether it contains profanity, personal information, or harmful content. With Auto-publish reviews on, a review that matches no hold rule is then published right away. A review that matches a hold rule stays pending, and its Activity shows Held for moderation with every rule that matched, such as Rating 2 or below.

• Arrival rules decide: The rules in force when a review arrives are the ones that apply to it. Changing your settings later doesn't re-check reviews already held or published, and turning auto-publish on doesn't publish held reviews early.
• Auto-publish off: Every review waits for your team, marked Auto-publish is off, and the 14-day auto-publish still applies. Activity still lists the hold rules a review matched.
• Imported reviews: Reviews you import from a CSV file skip your hold rules and your auto-publish setting, and publish once Cevoid has analyzed them. See Import and export reviews.
• Edited reviews: When a reviewer edits their review, it goes back to pending and is checked again like a new review. It publishes, or it's held with a new 14-day auto-publish date.
• AI suggests, never decides: Cevoid's AI never publishes, rejects, or hides a review on its own. It flags what it finds, and your hold rules and your team decide.

Hold rules keep a review pending when it matches. They apply while Auto-publish reviews is on, and you set them in Settings → Reviews → Moderation⁠ under Hold rules: prevent auto-publish if.

Low-credibility / likely-fake needs Credibility scoring on in Settings → AI & Agents → Reviews⁠. While it's off, the rule is switched off and can't hold anything. See Reviews AI.

Every held review gets an auto-publish date 14 days after it was held. If your team hasn't published or rejected it by then, Cevoid publishes it, and its Activity shows Published automatically.

• In the lists: A pending review shows Auto-publishes in and the time left, in yellow for the last five days. The Auto-publishes filter finds reviews by that date.
• On the overview: Things to do on Reviews → Overview⁠ lists the reviews that auto-publish within five days
• By email: The Pending review auto-publish reminder emails you before reviews publish. See Review notifications.

Rejected reviews never auto-publish. A hidden pending review is published on its date but stays hidden. A review imported through the API that was set to wait for your team shows No auto-publish date and never publishes on its own.

Publishing a pending review puts it on your store right away.

1. Navigate to Reviews → Product reviews⁠ or Reviews → Company reviews⁠
2. Click Pending
3. Click Publish on the review's row. In an open review, it's at the bottom.

The reviewer isn't emailed when your team publishes or rejects their review. To publish many reviews at once, see Act on several reviews at once.

Rejecting a review takes it off your store, or keeps it off, and records why. The reviewer's content is kept for your records, and the reviewer can write a new review.

1. Navigate to Reviews → Product reviews⁠ or Reviews → Company reviews⁠ and open the review
2. Click Reject. On a published review, it's in the More menu at the top.
3. Select one or more reasons in Reason. Cevoid fills in the reasons its findings and shopper reports point to.
4. Optional: Enter or change the Explanation, up to 1,000 characters. Cevoid fills it in when it found grounds for rejection.
5. Click Reject review

On a pending review, hover over Reject before you click it to see the Basis for rejection: whether Cevoid found grounds for rejection, and what shoppers reported.

Shopper reports fill in reasons too: see Reported reviews. Profanity and a reviewer's own contact details aren't grounds for rejection on their own, because masking hides them from shoppers.

There's no unpublish: rejecting is the only way to take a published review down. Rejecting a pinned review removes its pin.

A rejected review can be published again only from the bulk actions in a review list.

1. Navigate to Reviews → Product reviews⁠ or Reviews → Company reviews⁠
2. Click Rejected
3. Select the checkbox on the review
4. Click Actions
5. Select Publish. The review is published, and its rejection reasons are cleared.

A product review is hidden when the review blocklist hides its product's existing reviews, or when its product is no longer in your catalog in any market. Hiding isn't a moderation decision: the review keeps its status.

• Hidden reviews don't show on your store and don't count in ratings or on the Reviews overview
• The Hidden tab lists them, with Product is blocklisted or Product is no longer in the catalog under the status
• They can't be published, rejected, pinned, or converted, and they have no update link
• A hidden pending review still auto-publishes on its date, and stays hidden
• A hidden review shows again once no blocklist entry hides it and its product is in your catalog, without its old pin

Company reviews are never hidden.

The moderation settings page holds every switch that decides what publishes and how shoppers see reviews.

1. Navigate to Settings → Reviews → Moderation⁠
2. Set the settings you want to change
3. Click Save changes

The reply settings only set where the reply box starts: each reply can change them. See Replies. Changes to masking, votes, and reports reach your store within 5 minutes.

Cevoid finds profanity and personal information in every review. With Display profanity and Display PII set to Masked, the default, shoppers see that text replaced with asterisks.

• Masking changes only what shoppers see. Your team always sees the original, and setting Original shows the text on your store again.
• Links are masked together with personal information
• A review Cevoid hasn't analyzed yet shows unmasked
• Masked text stays masked in translations
• Changes reach your store within 5 minutes

Masking and holding are separate. By default, profanity and personal information also hold a review for your team: see Hold rules.

Shoppers can report a published review from a review widget, with a reason. A report never hides or changes the review. It adds to the review's report count, fills in reasons when you reject the review, and can email your team: see Review notifications.

• Where you see reports: The published reviews reported row on Reviews → Overview⁠, the Reported filter, and Reports in a review's sidebar. Click Reports to see each report's reason, date, and the shopper's text.
• Who reported: Your team never sees who reported a review
• One per shopper: Each shopper can report a review once, and can't report their own
• No dismissing: Reports can't be dismissed. A reported review you keep stays in the overview's reported row and in the Reported filter. To take it down, reject it.

With Reports off, shoppers can't report reviews, and the reports your team already has stay visible.

Shoppers can vote that a published review was helpful, without signing in, once per device. Helpful-vote display on the moderation settings sets what they see in every widget.

Each widget can hide votes, but not show them when they're off: see Review widget settings. In Helpful-only, down-votes are never shown on your store. A review's sidebar shows its votes under Helpful.