Moderating Reviews in Reorbit
Read, publish, feature, and remove customer reviews, and set the response window and profanity filters. Step-by-step review moderation guide for Reorbit.
Read customer feedback, reply before it goes public, and take down a review when there’s a legitimate reason to.
What is review moderation?
Review moderation is how you handle customer reviews before and after they appear on your storefront. Reorbit gives you two tools:
- Reviews — a workspace to read each review and publish, feature, or remove it.
- Review moderation settings — a response window that holds lower-rated reviews back for a few days so you can reply first, plus profanity filters.
Reviews publish on their own. Holding a review buys you time to respond; it is not a way to keep a review off your storefront. The only way a review leaves your storefront and your star rating is if you remove it with one of the listed reasons — and removing a review for being critical is not one of them, and is prohibited by the FTC’s consumer review rule (16 CFR §465.7).
Part 1 — Working through your reviews
1. Open Reviews
From the app, click Reviews in the main navigation. You’ll see your reviews in a list with a search box and a status filter: All reviews, Held for response, Published, Hidden, and Archived.
2. Read a review
Click a review to open it. Opening an unread review marks it as read. You’ll see the customer, star rating, their comment, and any photos or video they attached.
A review that’s still inside its response window shows a banner counting down to the moment it publishes itself.
3. Reply
Use the reply box to answer the customer. Your reply is shown with the review on your storefront. Replying does not delay publication — the review still goes live when its window is up, with your reply attached.
4. Take an action
For the selected review you can:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Publish | Publishes the review now, without waiting for its response window to end. |
| Feature | Marks the review as featured in Reorbit (toggle on/off), so you can find your standout reviews again. |
| Archive… | Removes the review from your storefront and from your displayed star rating. Asks you to pick a reason first. |
| Restore | Undoes a removal, putting the review back. |
Archiving asks for a reason — Fake, Duplicate, Spam, Unrelated to the product, Legal, Inappropriate language, Foreign language, Contains private information, or Other. The reason list is content-neutral by design: a review may be removed for being fraudulent or off-topic, never for being negative.
Part 2 — Response window and profanity filters
1. Open Review moderation
From the app, go to Settings → Review moderation.
2. Set your response window
In the Response window section:
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Publish reviews automatically | Reviews go live without you approving each one. |
| Hold reviews rated below | Reviews at this rating or higher publish straight away; anything below is held for your response, then publishes automatically. Set to 1 to hold nothing. |
| How long to hold them (days) | How long you get to respond before a held review publishes itself. You can shorten this window, never extend it. |
A held review still counts toward your star rating and still earns the customer their loyalty points — holding delays the display, nothing else.
3. Set up profanity filters
In the Profanity filters section:
- Profanity blacklist — words to mask in the review as shown on your storefront (enter words separated by commas). A review containing one is held for your response rather than publishing straight away.
- Profanity whitelist — words to remove from the filter, so legitimate terms your products use aren’t masked.
Matching is whole-word and case-insensitive, so whitelisting ass does not
un-mask asshole.
4. Save
Use the save bar to save your moderation settings.
Tips and best practices
- Hold the lower ratings, not everything — e.g. hold anything below 4★ so you get first crack at a problem, and let the rest publish immediately.
- Match the window to your support turnaround. A window you can’t answer within buys you nothing.
- Work the “Held for response” filter first — those are the reviews with a clock on them.
- Reply rather than remove. A good public reply to a critical review is worth more than the review costs you, and removing it for being critical isn’t permitted.
- Keep the whitelist current if your products use words a generic profanity filter might misread.
FAQ
Does archiving delete a review?
It removes the review from your storefront and from your displayed star rating, and records the reason you gave. The review itself is kept, and Restore puts it back.
Can I stop a review from ever publishing?
Not by leaving it alone — held reviews publish themselves when the window ends. Removing a review takes a reason from the listed set, and being critical or low-rated is not one of them.
Do I still have to moderate every review?
No. Reviews publish on their own; the response window only decides which ones wait for you first.
Next steps
- Next: Creating Review Groupings — pool reviews across variants.
- Related: How Review Requests Work · Write a Review · Adding Reorbit to your storefront
Common questions
- Does archiving delete a review?
- It removes the review from your storefront and from your displayed star rating, and records the reason you gave. The review itself is kept, and Restore puts it back.
- Can I stop a review from ever publishing?
- Not by leaving it alone — held reviews publish themselves when the window ends. Removing a review takes a reason from the listed set, and being critical or low-rated is not one of them.
- Do I still have to moderate every review?
- No. Reviews publish on their own; the response window only decides which ones wait for you first.