Review history

Definition

The accumulated ratings attached to a listing, which are the moat and do not travel.

Why It Matters

On the big marketplaces the reviews belong to the LISTING and not to the seller, so a business bought and then relisted under a new arrangement starts at zero on the one signal buyers actually sort by. That makes the review history the asset and the account transfer the mechanism that preserves it. Read the depth as well as the rating: a product carrying thousands of reviews across years is defensible, and one carrying a few hundred gathered in a single quarter is a promotion that has not been tested. Ask what share of revenue sits on the listings with the deepest histories, because that is the part of the price that is genuinely hard to replace.