Browser Extensions 

extn-support

Thanks for Installing the ReviewMeta Browser Extension!

May 2nd, 2016

How it Works:

extn-dim – The icon will be dim if it does not detect you are viewing a product page.  Clicking it will take you to our homepage.

Visit any Product page to see the extension in action.  We currently support products on:

  • Amazon.com, .ca, .co.uk, .com.au, .fr, .it and .de
  • Bodybuilding.com

Clicking on the icon will open the full analysis on ReviewMeta.com in a new tab:

extn-fail – Product gets a “FAIL” and adjusted rating of 2.9

extn-warn – Product gets a “WARN” and adjusted rating of 4.6

extn-pass – Product gets a “PASS” and adjusted rating of 4.5

extn-na – Product gets a “FAIL” and we couldn’t find enough trustworthy reviews to calculate an adjusted rating

extn-none – We haven’t run an analysis on this product; click to generate a report!

extn-load – The data for this product is loading.

Troubleshooting:

Icon cannot be found anywhere in browser:

  • This seems to be more common in FireFox, and is often due to privacy settings.  It seems that you must have “Remember History” set in your preferences in order for our extension to show up:

Screen Shot 2017-02-02 at 7.56.52 AM

 

extn-dim  Icon is dim at all times:

  • This means that the extension is not detecting that you are viewing a supported product page.  Make sure that you are are viewing a single product on Amazon.com, .ca, .co.uk, .com.au, .fr, .it .de or on Bodybuilding.com.
  • Try restarting your browser.
  • Check your other extensions for conflicts.

extn-load Always shows “load”:

  • This means that the browser is stuck loading the data from our servers.
  • Try pulling up ReviewMeta.com to see if our site is responding.
  • If you are generating a report on our site in another tab, it might be delayed because of that.  Wait until the report is completed and then try checking again.
  • Try restarting your browser.
  • Check your other extensions for conflicts.

extn-none Shows even though a report was generated:

  • This is likely due to caching.  Caching helps us reduce server load and cost and might result in seeing a small glitch like this once in a while.  The icon for that product should be updated in less than 24 hours.
  • If every single page is showing this, then it might be a server error.  Try using ReviewMeta.com in your browser to see if our site is responding.

FAQ:

Why does the plugin need permissions to read and change the content of my pages?

Our plugin performs two functions:

  1. Checks to see if you’re looking at a product on Amazon or Bodybuilding.com.  If you are, it only looks at the URL, then sends that over to our site which returns the test results (pass/fail + adjusted rating).  So that’s all we’re reading from your page.
  2. If you’re viewing a page on ReviewMeta.com, the plugin will add a tiny code to the bottom of the page so that it knows NOT to prompt you to install the plugin (since you’ve clearly already installed it!).

That’s it!  We’re not doing anything else.

Are you injecting your affiliate code into pages that I’m browsing?

No, we don’t make any money off the extension.  Our goal is to make it easier for you to make use of ReviewMeta.com and visit our site more often.

Questions?  Support?

We’d love to hear your feedback and help you if you are having any troubles at all.  Please feel free to contact us with your thoughts/questions.

Problems with smile.amazon.com?

You’re not alone.  We’ve received a few reports about intermittent issues with smile.amazon.com.  The problem is that I have never been able to reproduce it so I can’t seem to figure it out.  If you notice that the extension is not working when using smile.amazon.com, PLEASE take a screenshot or at least copy the full URL and send it in to [email protected].  Thank you!

A special note to Safari users: 

Unfortunately, Apple does not permit the use of decimals or text in the badge, nor is it possible to change the color.  Because of these constraints, the Safari extension will not display any information itself; it will only act as a shortcut to pull up the corresponding report on ReviewMeta.com when browsing products on Amazon.


37 responses to “Thanks for Installing the ReviewMeta Browser Extension!”

  1. NesteaZen says:

    thank you. great stuff. using it on firefox

  2. Arminator says:

    Why on earth would clicking on the ReviewMeta icon (when I’m on an Amazon page) take me to the ReviewMeta HOMEPAGE and require to copy and paste the Amazon Product page URL, intead of automatically going to the ReviewMeta product page?
    ??‍♂️??‍♀️

    • This is not how the extension is supposed to work. Sometimes the browser doesn’t provide the extension with the required information. Usually hitting refresh will get the extension to receive the correct data.

  3. Dan Ramsey says:

    How can I search Amazon product reviews for ones with lower ratings due to poor product documentation?

  4. Trampolin Pinguin says:

    Hello,
    I do not understand why in order to get your extension I would have to download the whole firefox tralala though I have it already installed (and always the newest version).

  5. Dave Sparks says:

    The Firefox extension is working great so far! I’m impressed by all the different metrics your site uses to analyze ratings. And since I’m on Amazon quite a bit, I expect this will be a help! I’d love an extension that works for my Dophin browser on my phone. :)

  6. Barry Melius says:

    A solid product that helps cut through the hype. I used ReviewMeta’s report as part of a review on A Memory Called Empire in Kindle Books and it leant significant weight to my piece. Thank you for this app, it helps restore my opinion that basically people are good folks despite all the evidence pushed forward to the contrary.

  7. Gruff Dan says:

    Thanks, didn’t even know this was out there, let alone useful…been burned with fake reviews and products from Amazon sellers.

  8. Burfree deGriet says:

    Great tool, just installed and tested. Think it will be very helpful. Especiallyy when looking at high price items. Not concerned for the 1.99 specials !

  9. PixelMaster says:

    It doesn’t work if you’re on the respective smile.amazon.* website. Could you fix that? After all, smile.amazon links are recognized on your website itself.

    //edit maybe I should fully read the text above first. Oh well XD
    //edit2: for me, the problems occured on smile.amazon.de – I don’t have an amazon.com account, so I don’t know if it occurs there.

    • This smile.amazon.com bug is quite the challenge. I just tried it on smile.amazon.de and it seems to be working for me. Which of the icons above are you seeing when looking at a product page? What happens when you click the icon?

      • PixelMaster says:

        well, I *used* to see the “Icon is dim at all times” icon. Now, however, it shows the rating normally.

        … I might have just forgotten to restart the browser last time. If I’m correct, shame on me XD (the regular amazon.de did work regardless, though)

  10. Anthony Ferguson says:

    This thing is so useful it knocks “sliced bread” into a cocked hat!
    Thank you for making it available.

  11. Robin Anderson says:

    This thing works! Thank you. I just checked some of my past orders on smile.amazon.com and it appeared to function well. Also was relieved to see that most of the results were reasonable.

  12. ambientnoise says:

    You’re awesome for creating this! Can we donate to it? (No, I’m not a bot or anything. Just listened to the Planet Money episode and am an Amazon Vine review who *really* hates spam reviews.)

  13. Ayahualpa says:

    Very cool stuff, been using it for a few months. One thing: I just used your Categories section to find an excellent product that I probably wouldn’t have using just Amazon. It had much less reviews than the mega-promoted crap out there, but looks way more genuine. Something to think about extending ;o).

    • Glad you’re enjoying the category feature! It’s still not quite exactly the level that I want it; I’d like to do some more improvements in the future, but I’m happy to hear it is helping you to discover new products!

  14. pete says:

    Very cool work. Thanks!
    Now can you apply it to facebook, twitter and fox?

  15. CoolRaoul says:

    Chrome extension used to work for me but now activating the button works pretty much like a simple shortcut/favorite: this just redirects to reviewmeta home page where I’m asked to paste the product URL.

    • Just tested and it seems to be working for me. If you’re in the process of building a report, or have a bunch of tabs open, the API may not go through because of a flood limiter. Please email me at [email protected] for debugging info if you continue to experience this problem.

      • CoolRaoul says:

        After restarting computer it worked (using the exact same Amazon product page: I had bookmarked)
        But it’s not the first time I’m facing that issue

  16. Shawne813 says:

    (raising my hand) Would love to see Safari extension

  17. Moritz says:

    Hi, I would be interested in a Safari-Extension (the bookmarklet does not seem to work there).

    I am no web developer but I do believe that you could reuse code for your chrome extension relatively easily here as Safari extensions can be based on javascript as well.

    A simple (quick and dirty 😉 ) example of a safari extension can be found here (disclaimer: my github account):
    https://github.com/moritzfl/safari-bibtex/blob/master/bibtex.safariextension/global.html

    If you provide the sourcecode for your extensions, I would also be willing to try and create a safari version.

    • Hi Moritz-

      I’m sending you an email, but I wanted to respond publicly here about the status of the Safari extension:

      We had actually created a Safari extension a few years back. They have much stricter design requirements and essentially the extension was going to be clunky and look like crap. They don’t have a number in the icon that you can easily change; we would have had to manage about 300 icons to show you the data.

      We decided since the share of visitors using Safari was so low, we decided to hold off on publishing it until there was some demand.

  18. Adam E. says:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0a5e031d12a2ce429a003e6d4b430239d72160ed2cc13c19148e216e3cf37bac.jpg

    I requested an extension for Edge, but I got the response “You’re receiving this email because you requested to be notified when we released our extension on other platforms (such as Safari, Edge, mobile devices, etc). Since our bookmarklet works across all devices, it’s unlikely we’ll be creating extensions for Edge/Safari, etc.”
    Screw the bookmarklet! So anyway I converted the extension from Chrome to Edge myself. It took 10 minutes using Microsoft’s conversion kit. It loads successfully, clicking on the extension icon takes me to the correct analysis of the selected product. However, I don’t see the rating on the icon when I’m at the product page in Amazon.
    ReviewMeta, instead of taking 5 minutes to send me an e-mail why don’t you spend 5 minutes fixing and releasing your extension for Edge. Currently, Edge has very few BUT VERY VISIBLE extensions in the Microsoft store. Articles are actually written and published whenever one or two new extensions are released. Yours will definitely be seen instead of be buried like in the Firefox and Chrome extension stores. Think about it!

    • Hey Adam-

      We built the bookmarklet due to popular request since some folks didn’t want to install the full extension. The bookmarklet also works on a lot more than just Edge, it works on Safari, Chrome for Android, etc.

      I hear what you’re saying about the Edge conversion – it doesn’t look too hard to get it to work for Edge, however none of us have a Windows 10 device to test on. After a little shopping on Amazon, I was able to order a device that should help me develop an test the Edge extension. Hopefully we’ll have it released by next week!

      Thanks for the info!

      • Adam E. says:

        Thank you very much for taking the time to read my feedback and the effort to make a positive change for the user. I really appreciate that. I apologize if my post came as snappy or anything like that. I am more than willing to do any testing even though it sounds like it might be a straightforward port with minor tweaks.

        • Spent some time getting the extension set up for Edge, however it seems submitting to the store is restricted:

          “Submitting a Microsoft Edge extension to the Windows Store is currently a restricted capability.”

          We reached out to them and started the process so hopefully we’ll get approved at some point.

          In the meantime, we’ve fixed some issues with the API so your version of the extension should start correctly displaying the rating on the icon itself.

          • Adam E. says:

            Are there any updates regarding the release of the extension in the Microsoft Store?

            Also, after about a week, I confirm that the API changes/fixes did not make a difference in making the rating appear/overlay the extension icon. I still see the “-” instead of a number regardless of the product I’m viewing.

          • They still haven’t approved my application. Everything is fully submitted on our end and we’re just waiting for them to approve it.

  19. Adam E. says:

    There you go!

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