How RatedVoices works

How we calculate the rating

Every business page shows one headline score out of five. It's the average of all published reviews on that page, weighted a little toward recent ones so a company that just cleaned up its act (or just slipped) is reflected fairly.

Reviews from the last twelve months count the most. Older reviews still count, they just fade over time. We also give a tiny bump to reviews that include specific details (what you bought, what happened, how support responded) because those help you more than a one-word rave or rant.

We don't round up. A 3.4 stays a 3.4.

What the trust labels mean

Under the stars, each business gets a plain-English label so you can scan a page in a second.

• Excellent — 4.5 to 5.0. Real customers keep coming back happy.
• Great — 4.0 to 4.4. Mostly good experiences with the odd rough patch.
• Good — 3.0 to 3.9. Fine for most people, worth reading the reviews first.
• Mixed — 2.0 to 2.9. Opinions are split. Go in with your eyes open.
• Poor — below 2.0. A lot of unhappy customers. Shop carefully.

Where reviews come from

Anyone can sign up and leave a review on RatedVoices. You don't need a receipt, but you do need a verified email, and you can only post once per business. If you've actually used the product or service, we want to hear from you.

Businesses can also invite their own customers to review them. When they do, those reviews are tagged so you can tell them apart from reviews people wrote on their own. Both count toward the score, but the tag is always visible.

How we fight fake reviews

Fake reviews are the whole reason sites like this exist, and they're also the thing that can ruin one. We take it seriously.

• Every review has a "Report this review" link. If something looks off — a competitor smear, a suspiciously glowing paragraph, a copy-paste job — tell us and a human looks at it.
• We rate-limit new accounts. You can't sign up and blast ten reviews in an hour.
• Businesses can reply publicly to any review, which is often the fastest way to clear up a misunderstanding.
• If a review breaks our guidelines, we take it down and tell the person why. If a business pretends to be a customer, we remove the review and flag the business profile so you can see what happened.

What we will never do

We don't take money to move a business up the rankings. Not for ads, not for "featured" slots, not for anything. The order you see is the order the math produces.

We won't delete a critical review just because the business asks us to. A review only comes down if it breaks a specific rule in our guidelines — things like doxxing, threats, or clearly made-up claims.

We don't publish sponsored reviews dressed up as reader opinion. If a brand ever pays for placement anywhere on the site, it will say so, loudly, on the thing they paid for.

Corrections and getting in touch

If we get something wrong on a business page — a merged company, a wrong website, a label that no longer fits — email us and we'll fix it fast. Same goes for your own review: you can edit or delete it any time while signed in.

For anything else, write to us at hello@ratedvoices.com. A real person reads every message.