Negative Votes

Negative votes let you actively suppress products from appearing in results when a shopper selects a specific answer. While regular vote assignment promotes products, negative votes penalise them — pushing their score down so they fall below the threshold required to appear as a recommendation.

How suppression works

Every product's final score is the sum of all votes it receives across every answer the shopper selects. ShopperQuiz only shows products with a score above zero. If a product's total reaches zero or below, it is excluded from results — even if it earned positive votes from other answers in the quiz.

Negative votes exploit this directly. Assign a negative vote value to a product (or a whole collection or tag), and if the shopper selects that answer, those negative votes are subtracted from that product's running total.

Enabling negative votes on an answer

Expand any answer row by clicking its chevron. At the top of the vote assignment area you'll see an Allow negative votes toggle. It is off by default.

Turn it on. The vote steppers for that answer now allow values below 1 — you can step down into negative numbers or type any value directly into the field.

The toggle is per-answer, not per-question. You can have some answers that only assign positive votes and others that also suppress — they work independently.

Setting a negative vote value

Once the toggle is on, use the stepper or type directly into the vote field. There is no floor — you can go as low as you need.

How low should you go?

It depends on how many positive votes the product can realistically accumulate from other answers. If a product can earn up to 8 positive votes across the rest of the quiz, assigning −8 means selecting this answer exactly cancels those out and the product won't appear. Assigning −9 or lower guarantees suppression regardless of other votes.

When you want a product to never appear if this answer is selected — regardless of how many positive votes it picks up elsewhere — go large: −50 or −100. There is no penalty for using a high magnitude. A score of −90 and a score of −1 both result in the same outcome: the product is excluded. The higher number just gives you more certainty that no realistic combination of positive votes elsewhere can overcome it.

Which assignment methods support negative votes

All four tabs work with negative votes once the toggle is on:

• Individual products — suppress specific products by name
• Collection / Category — suppress every product in a collection at once
• Tag — suppress every product carrying a tag
• All products — suppress the entire catalogue (useful when combined with filters to remove everything outside scope)

Viewing suppressed products in the right panel

The Store Products panel on the right updates live. Products with a negative net vote total appear with a red badge showing their score. This makes it easy to see at a glance which products are being actively suppressed across the quiz.

Products that net exactly zero appear in the "Not in this quiz" section — they have no positive presence in results.

When to use negative votes

Use negative votes when:

• A specific answer makes a product clearly unsuitable, but that product still receives positive votes from other answers
• You want to override the voting engine's natural ranking for a particular answer combination
• You need to exclude a product for one segment of shoppers without removing it from results for everyone

Don't use negative votes when:

• The product simply isn't relevant — just don't assign it any positive votes and it will stay at zero
• A filter question would be cleaner — if the product should be disqualified for an entire category of shopper (e.g. "vegan only"), a filter question is more appropriate

Negative votes vs filter questions

	Negative votes	Filter questions
Scope	Per-answer	Per-question
Mechanism	Reduces score	Eliminates before scoring
Overridable	Yes — enough positive votes elsewhere can overcome a small negative	No — filter elimination is absolute
Best for	Soft suppression, nuanced ranking	Hard requirements, dealbreakers

Use filters for dealbreakers. Use negative votes for strong preferences where suppression should still be possible to overcome with enough positive signal from other answers — or use a very large negative value (−50, −100) when you want guaranteed suppression without the rigidity of a filter.