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Trustpilot Review: Is Trustpilot Legit?

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Whether you’re a consumer wanting to read some reviews before you buy from a company for the first time or a business hoping to create a bigger online presence, Trustpilot may be worth checking out. 

Team Clark has looked into Trustpilot to see if you can trust the reviews you’ll find there and to get an idea of how the website may help businesses and consumers. In this article, I’ll take a close look at what Trustpilot is, how it works and how to keep an eye out for fake reviews. 

This article was updated in February 2024 and I review it every 12 months. Detailed notes on all updates can be found here .

5 Things To Know About Trustpilot

Whether you’re looking at a product, seller or service provider, reading reviews first is a great way to ensure you’re getting the most for your money. One review site to consider is Trustpilot.com. 

Before you start browsing reviews or posting some of your own, learn about these five things about Trustpilot:

• What Is Trustpilot?
• How Does Trustpilot Work?
• Is Trustpilot Legit?
• How To Spot Fake Reviews
• Final Thoughts: Should I Trust Trustpilot?

Below, you’ll find detailed information about how Trustpilot works, tips to keep in mind while reading reviews and Team Clark’s take on whether or not you should make this review site a part of your regular routine. 

1. What Is Trustpilot?

Trustpilot is a consumer review website that was founded in 2007. Like the Better Business Bureau or Yelp, it’s a resource that people can use to leave reviews and read reviews from other consumers .

According to the website , founder and CEO Peter Holten Mühlmann started Trustpilot to give consumers a voice and to give companies a way to listen and respond. The company says it aims to achieve this goal in the most transparent way possible in order to build trust. 

Basically, consumers can use Trustpilot to look up businesses and read or leave reviews and ratings. Companies can claim their Trustpilot pages in order to interact directly with their customers .

Trustpilot prides itself on being free for everyone, but there are also paid options for businesses that give them access to additional features.

2. How Does Trustpilot Work?

Trustpilot works by collecting ratings and reviews from consumers around the world. Consumers can create free accounts to share their experiences with businesses, and companies can create free accounts to respond. But you don’t need an account to see business ratings and read reviews .

While anyone can leave reviews on Trustpilot, t here are guidelines for who’s eligible to rate and review a company. You have to check a box when leaving a review that confirms you’re writing about your own genuine experience, and you have to enter your email address to verify your review. 

Whether you just want to read reviews or leave one of your own, visit Trustpilot.com to get started.

From the website’s homepage, you can search for a company or category to explore. I typed in “dresslily” and clicked on DressLily.com to get an idea of how Trustpilot works . This is a clothing retailer that I’ve seen advertised on social media, but I’ve never ordered from it. 

As you can see, the company had an average rating of 2.8/5 stars from 3,543 reviews at the time of writing. 

Below this, you’ll see the option to write a review. If you want to review the company, click the number of stars you’d like to rate it, and click “Write a review.” From there , you can talk about your experience, give your review a title and confirm that the review is about your own experience. Then you’ll be asked to sign in with Google, Facebook or your email address to continue.

Beneath the option to write a review, you’ll see a breakdown of existing reviews. This feature lets you see what percentage of reviews are bad, poor, average, great and excellent. From there, you can filter the reviews by rating. 

Lower on the page, you’ll see all of the published reviews sorted by date. Trustpilot says the r eviews are published automatically, so there’s no censorship. You can scroll down to read reviews left by customers as well as replies from the company. You’ll also see if any reviews have been reported and removed for breaching Trustpilot’s guidelines .

To the right, you’ll see the Business Transparency section. Here, I could see that DressLily claimed its Trustpilot profile in 2015 and had responded to 99% of its negative reviews at the time of writing. You can click on “See all company activity” for more details. 

On this page, you’ll find detailed information on how a company has used Trustpilot over the past 12 months. This includes where the company’s reviews come from, how its ratings differ per source, how many reviews it has flagged and whether those flagged reviews actually breached Trustpilot’s guidelines. 

The business transparency page is one of the most valuable resources because it gives you an idea of how the company is interacting with its customers.

With DressLily , I could see that most of the reviews are organic (meaning unsolicited), and the rest were generated by manual invitations the company sent out. I scrolled down to the “New reviews by star rating” table and filtered it by manual invitations.

By doing this, I found that all reviews left by manual invitations were great or excellent aside from one outlier. 

Then I filtered the same table by organic reviews to find that while most were bad, there were still a good number of positive organic reviews posted in the past year. 

This tells me that DressLily may filter who it invites to review the company. I also found that, out of 376 reviews in the last year, DressLily had flagged 241 for removal. The data show that only 10% of these were flagged for invalid reasons, which means most of the flagged reviews actually did breach Trustpilot’s guidelines. And DressLily responded to 99% of its negative reviews, typically within a week.

T o me, this says that DressLily is actively involved with its customers on Trustpilot , even though the company hasn’t paid to access Trustpilot’s additional features. If it had, there would have been a note on the review page under “Business Transparency.” 

After using Trustpilot to read reviews about this company and seeing how it interacts with unsatisfied customers, I’d feel relatively confident placing an order with DressLily.

How Does Trustpilot Work for Businesses?

For businesses, Trustpilot works a little differently. You can click on “For Businesses” in the top-right-hand corner of the Trustpilot homepage. From there, you can create a free business account or see your company’s current star rating. 

With a free account, you can access basic services such as claiming your company profile page, inviting customers to leave reviews and responding to reviews. 

“Businesses can respond for free, but a lot of them just ignore their clients,” says money expert Clark Howard . “That tells you something by itself.”

Creating a free account on Trustpilot for your business is a great way to interact with your customers, build your online presence and increase your credibility. Potential customers who look up your company’s profile will be able to see how you’ve interacted with previous customers and how you’ve used Trustpilot in the last year.

Paid membership options begin at $225 per month. With the entry-level Standard package, you’ll gain access to additional features including an ad-free company profile page, 500 automated review invitation emails per month and more. Beyond the standard membership, add-ons and enterprise options can get quite pricey. You’ll have to contact Trustpilot if you want a custom quote for these services.

3. Is Trustpilot Legit?

Based on what I’ve seen, Trustpilot seems to be a legitimate consumer review website that genuinely aims to connect customers and businesses in the most transparent way possible. 

“I like this,” Clark says while browsing the Trustpilot website. “There’s a certain network effect. They’ve got 104 million reviews, they’ve been around 13 years. … This looks like the real deal!”

To determine Trustpilot’s legitimacy further, I researched a few more examples in the same way that I looked at DressLily in the section above. 

Example 1: Everlane

Two of Team Clark’s members have successfully ordered products from Everlane , so I checked out that website next. 

The “bad” score was immediately alarming, until I noticed that the company hasn’t claimed its profile page nor has it been active on Trustpilot in the last 12 months. It’s worth noting that Walmart’s ratings are even worse, and I consider Walmart to be a relatively trustworthy retailer.

I checked Everlane out with the Better Business Bureau to see how these scores compared. While it’s not paying for BBB accreditation, Everlane did have a much higher score (A-) after closing 148 complaints in the last 12 months. Because of this, I know that the company is at least engaging with its customers somewhere online. 

So in this case, I couldn’t rely on Trustpilot to verify that Everlane is a legitimate website, but I could rely on the reviews to see what kind of problems other people have had. Since Everlane isn’t active on Trustpilot, I think it’s fair to assume that it’s highly unlikely the company is flagging negative reviews or hiring people to write reviews on its behalf. 

Example 2: Wish.com  

Next, I looked at the Trustpilot profile page for Wish.com . I have several family members who regularly order from this site, so I know that this is a legitimate retailer. Still, I know that the shipping times, quality and advertised sizes seem to be frequent complaints from Wish customers. 

Despite those common complaints, Wish had average ratings on Trustpilot at the time of writing. Since then, the rating has moved up to 4.5 (Excellent). Wish has claimed its Trustpilot profile and pays to access extra Trustpilot features. While the company has responded to only 2% of its negative reviews, the business transparency block says that Wish typically responds to negative reviews within a week. This tells me that Trustpilot may be one way to contact a particular company if you have a problem. 

One potential issue here for me is that Wish received 10,500 excellent reviews in January 2020, which was significantly more than any other month that year. While the post-holiday season and COVID could have had some impact, this big number made me wonder if some of those reviews are fake. 

Because Wish pays for Trustpilot’s extra features and had a crazy amount of excellent reviews in one month, I’m a bit skeptical about how much I can trust this rating. Still, many of the individual reviews were clearly genuine. So the reviews can still be helpful, especially if you keep an eye out for red flags that might indicate fakes .

Example 3: Fabletics

I was also curious about Fabletics . This is another clothing retailer I’ve seen advertised on social media, but I’ve never placed an order with the company. After learning a little more about how Trustpilot works, I decided to check out Fabletics’ listing.

At the time of writing, Fabletics had 110,109 reviews and averaged 4 stars, which is a great rating. Since then, the company’s average rating has decreased to 3.8. I could see that the company has claimed its Trustpilot account, pays to access extra Trustpilot features, typically replies to negative reviews within a week and has responded to 99% of negative reviews. 

Just browsing through the recent reviews, I saw a great mix of what seemed like genuine negative, positive, and average reviews, which is always a good sign . Additionally, some of the negative reviews have been invited by Fabletics, which makes me think that the company doesn’t limit its review invitations to only those customers who’ve had positive experiences.

I could also see that the company had already responded to many of the negative reviews that were left earlier the same day. That tells me Fabletics is most likely a trustworthy company and that Trustpilot may be a great way to contact Fabletics if I have any questions after my order. In this case, Trustpilot told me a lot about the company I was researching. 

I double-checked these ratings against the BBB just to compare, and Fabletics has a significantly lower customer review average there. In fact, it averaged just 1.15 out of 5 stars despite having an A+ BBB rating and paying for accreditation. Still, in the last year, the company has closed 165 complaints, which tells me that Fabletics is involved with its customers on both review sites. This is good to know despite some low ratings and negative reviews. Because of these factors, I would trust ordering from this company. 

Overall, I found that Trustpilot provides a great amount of transparency and gives businesses the opportunity to connect with their customers, whether they take it or not. As a consumer, I thought the actual reviews on Trustpilot were extremely helpful, and the business transparency page gave me an idea of how much I could trust what I was reading. That’s a feature you don’t get on every review site! 

Keep in mind that, just like anything you read online, not all of the reviews are genuine. There’s no perfect system, and there will always be ways for companies to filter review invitations or hire others to write fake reviews for their benefit. 

4. How To Spot Fake Reviews

Unfortunately, fake reviews are everywhere online, and they seem to be increasing.

“It’s important to know how much of the reviews out there are bogus,” says Clark, “and the idea of Trustpilot is that these are reviews you can trust.”

Of course, Trustpilot’s transparency model allows users to post reviews instantly with only minor verification and no censorship. This is one reason that you may come across some less-than-reputable reviews on Trustpilot just like you might on any review site. 

In order to spot fake reviews, here are a few tips to keep in mind: 

• Look for a lot of reviews posted in a short amount of time. This can be a red flag especially if all the reviews are positive or if all of them are negative. This could be the work of a person/company flooding the page with fake reviews. 
• Look at other reviews that the reviewer has left. This can give you an idea of whether or not the account is owned by a real person or by someone who’s been paid to write targeted reviews. Fake accounts may not have a profile picture or name, and they may be leaving reviews for just one type of product or a single company. 
• Look at the language and grammar. Some companies hire contractors from around the world or even use automated technology to post fake reviews. You may be able to pick these out based on how poorly the review is written. 

In addition to keeping these tips in mind, note that Trustpilot has measures in place for combatting fake reviews . According to the website, Trustpilot has more than 80 people safeguarding the platform and reviewing more than 9,000 suspicion reviews each month from members of the global community.

5. Final Thoughts: Should I Trust Trustpilot?

Based on my research, Trustpilot is definitely a legitimate resource worth your time. This is especially true if you’ve never ordered from a website before or if you need to contact a company that’s active on Trustpilot.

A low score on Trustpilot doesn’t necessarily mean a company isn’t legit, but it may give you a better idea of what to expect before ordering. And if a company has a mix of genuine positive, average and negative reviews and it routinely responds to unsatisfied customers, you can consider this to be a strong indicator that it’s safe to do business with that organization. 

When it comes to big-name retailers and companies like Walmart, Expedia or American Airlines, you’ll mostly find negative reviews. Reading these isn’t necessarily going to help you gather quality information. But when it comes to online retailers, Trustpilot is a great place to see if a company is engaged with its customers and to read about genuine experiences from other consumers.

Finally, if you own a company or business, claiming your Trustpilot profile, responding to reviews and inviting customers to rate your page can be a great way to build a trustworthy online presence.

How are you using Trustpilot? Let us know in the Clark.com Community !

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How To Evaluate Online Reviews

Consider the Source and Ask Questions

Using reviews.

The FTC has brought a number of cases involving online reviews — likely more than any law enforcement agency in the world. Some involved companies that posted fake reviews of their own products and services. Others involved reviews by people who might have been real customers or users of a product but didn’t say that they’d been paid to write a positive review.

When you use online reviews to help you make decisions, consider the source of the information. What do you know about this reviewer? Or about the site or platform where you’re reading the review?

For years, the FTC’s main recommendation when considering reviews has been to look at a variety of sources, including well-known websites that have trustworthy and impartial expert reviews. That’s still a very good place to start. Here are some other steps to take:

• Check how recent the reviews are, and watch for a burst of reviews over a short period of time. That can sometimes mean the reviews are fake.
• Check if the reviewer has written other reviews. If so, read those to get a better sense of how much to trust that reviewer. If it seems that the reviewer has created an account just to write one review for one product, that review may be fake.
• Don’t assume that, just by looking, you can spot the difference between a real review and a fake one. Some reviews may look suspicious, and some may look real, but it can often be nearly impossible to tell for sure. For example, you already know to watch out for reviews that seem too positive to be real, but some fake positive reviews give less than the highest possible rating in order to seem more believable.
• Remember that fake reviews are not always positive. Sometimes, a company might post fake negative reviews to harm a competitor.

You won’t always know if a reviewer got something — like a free product — in exchange for writing a review. But, on some websites, you’ll see a label or badge next to the review that tells you the reviewer got an incentive. How you weigh those reviews is up to you.

Can you trust online reviews? Here's how to find the fakes

The Federal Trade Commission announced a groundbreaking lawsuit Tuesday against a company it accuses of paying for fake Amazon reviews. But the agency may have a lot more work to do if it wants to end the scourge of fake online reviews.

An NBC News investigation found thousands of questionable reviews on Amazon, Yelp, Facebook and Google — and showed that it was possible to purchase hundreds of positive reviews within days for a new company that had never done any work.

On Google and Facebook, the profile photos of the reviewers helped expose many questionable reviews . The profiles used the likenesses of such actors and actresses Terry Crews, Megan Fox, Omari Hardwick and Abigail Breslin. Those celebrities all confirmed that they did not write the reviews in question.

Jason Brown runs the consumer advocacy website reviewfraud.org and said it's common for fake reviewers to use images of celebrities — often by accident.

"What they'll do is they'll create their account, do a Google search for headshots and when they're doing that to add it to their account, they'll get famous people by mistake," Brown said.

Over on Yelp, photos again gave away the questionable reviews. In glowing reviews for a contractor in California, three users posted beautiful photos of what they said was the finished work. However, the photos are apparently not of the contractor's work, but stock photos that can be purchased from Getty Images and Shutterstock.

On Amazon, one reviewer had posted 676 book reviews in the past six months — every single one of them was four or five stars out of five. Many had the same generic text and a similar headline: "I really liked it!"

To see how businesses may be purchasing fake reviews, NBC News created a gardening business on Facebook and paid $168 to websites that promised to post positive reviews. Within 24 hours, the business had 999 likes and a few days after that, more than 600 five-star reviews. The reviews came from apparently fake Facebook accounts –- the profiles spread out across the globe. The reviews even include generic descriptions of the work such as "really efficient and a pleasure to deal with" and "very polite, did a wonderful job."

While the speed and volume with which the gardening business garnered raves may be shocking, Brown said the problem is common and out of control.

"It really is the wild west and there's no sheriff on duty," he said.

In statements, Facebook, Google, Amazon and Yelp all said they are aware of the problem and have protocols in place to actively monitor and remove fake reviews. They also said the public can help end the problem by flagging suspicious reviews.

Brown says consumers should be vigilant and avoid reviews with these red flags:

• Typos or broken English – many fake reviewers are based in foreign countries.
• A sudden influx of positive reviews – that may be a sign that the business a consumer is researching has recently paid for positive influence.
• Positive reviews spread out across the globe – a typical reviewer will have a number of reviews, both positive and negative, in the location they live and maybe a few others elsewhere. But if they only have positive reviews spread out in various countries, that's a sign the reviewers were paid to write them.

Joe Enoch is a consumer investigations producer with NBC News.

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How to Identify Legitimate Websites

Last Updated: March 15, 2024 Tested

Using General Tips

Using a google transparency report, using the better business bureau.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Jack Lloyd . Jack Lloyd is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. He has over two years of experience writing and editing technology-related articles. He is technology enthusiast and an English teacher. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. The wikiHow Tech Team also followed the article's instructions and verified that they work. This article has been viewed 2,296,983 times. Learn more...

Are you concerned that a website or link you're visiting might be a scam site? There are many ways to check if a website is safe and legitimate using context clues and online tools, including the Better Business Bureau website. This wikiHow article will help you verify the safety and authenticity of any website.

Checking Website Legitimacy

There are several ways to check if a site is legitimate. Look for a padlock icon to the left of the URL, which indicates the site's security. You can also look at the URL itself—more credible and legitimate sites may start with "http" and end with ".gov" or ".org."

• Google tends to compile user reviews of high-traffic sites near the top of the search results, so be sure to check these if there are any.
• Make sure you're looking at reviews and feedback from sources unaffiliated with the website.

• A site that uses an "https" connection can still be unreliable, so it's best to verify the website using other means as well.
• Make sure the site's payment page in particular is an "https" page.

• You can click on the padlock icon to verify the details of the website (e.g., the type of encryption used).

• Multiple dashes or symbols in the domain name.
• Domain names that imitate actual businesses (e.g., "Amaz0n" or "NikeOutlet").
• One-off sites that use a credible site's templates (e.g., "visihow").
• Domain extensions like ".biz" and ".info". These sites tend not to be credible. [5] X Research source
• Keep in mind as well that ".com" and ".net" sites, while not inherently unreliable, are the easiest domain extensions to obtain. As such, they don't carry the same credibility as a ".edu" (educational institute) or ".gov" (government) site. [6] X Research source

• Even if the site in question is technically legitimate insofar as it isn't a scam, any inaccuracies in language will also cast doubt on the accuracy of its information, thereby making it a poor source.

• Ads that take up the whole page
• Ads that require you to take a survey (or complete some other action) before continuing
• Ads that redirect you to another page
• Explicit or suggestive ads

• Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the site to search for the Contact page.
• If the site in question doesn't have a Contact page listed anywhere, it should be an immediate red flag.

• Private registration: It's possible register a domain privately, where a "private registration" provider serves as the domain's contact, instead of the actual owner. If a domain uses private registration, consider this a red flag.
• Contact information is suspicious: For example, if the name of a registrant is "Steve Smith," but the email address is "[email protected]", this might be a sign that the registrant is trying to hide their true identity.
• Recent registration or transfers: A recent registration or transfer of a domain may indicate that a site is not trustworthy.

• For best results, copy your website's URL and paste it into this field.

• For example, sites like wikiHow and YouTube achieve "Not dangerous" ratings from Google, whereas Reddit garners a "Partially dangerous" rating due to "deceptive content" (e.g., misleading advertising).
• The Google Transparency Report also provides examples of why it gave a certain site a rating, so you can decide for yourself whether or not the rating rationale pertains to you.

• Note that the Better Business Bureau is geared toward matching businesses with your provided website. If you're simply trying to see if the website is safe, use the Google Transparency Report.

• If you don't know your business' geographic location, skip this step.

• For example, if your website claims to sell shoes but the Better Business Bureau links the URL to an ad revenue service, you know that the site is a scam.
• However, if the Better Business Bureau results line up with the site's theme, you can probably trust the site.

Community Q&A

• Wolfram Alpha is another great place for running website diagnostics. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Scrolling to the bottom of any website should contain an 'About us' page. This page is necessary for establishing credibility for the group in question and it will provide some background on the group and their goals. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Sites that are user-driven (like eBay or Craigslist) are hard to classify as "safe" due to their dynamic natures. While you're unlikely to contract a computer virus from eBay, you still need to look out for instances of other users attempting to scam you. [11] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/
• ↑ https://blog.webnames.ca/how-to-determine-if-a-website-is-a-fake-fraud-or-scam/
• ↑ https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95617?hl=en
• ↑ https://uscupstate.libguides.com/c.php?g=257977&p=1721715
• ↑ https://itxdesign.com/com-vs-biz-the-domain-value-battle/
• ↑ https://uknowit.uwgb.edu/
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5495972/
• ↑ https://cxl.com/blog/website-credibility-checklist-factors/
• ↑ https://whois.icann.org/en/using-whois
• ↑ https://transparencyreport.google.com/about?hl=en
• ↑ https://www.welivesecurity.com/2015/02/09/common-ebay-scams-avoid/

About This Article

To find out if a website is legitimate, Google the website’s name and review the results. If the site is illegitimate, a quick Google check will be enough to inform you accordingly. Also, look at the website itself to see if it connects securely over https and displays a tiny padlock icon in the address bar. If you want a more official confirmation of the site's legitimacy, use Google's Transparency Report or search for the site's name on the Better Business Bureau's website. For tips on using Google's Transparency Report tool, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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32 Customer Review Sites for Collecting Business & Product Reviews

Published: July 10, 2023

We (and the rest of the internet for the past decade) have already spent some time convincing you of the importance of acquiring online customer reviews for your business. (Did you know that in a recent HubSpot Research survey, 1/3 of respondents said review sites played an important role in their purchasing decision-making process?)

But if you're new to customer reviews or not sure where to find them, let's brush up on some basics and highlight why they're relevant for your business.

In a bit of a time crunch? Use the jump links below to navigate to the exact content you're looking for.

Table of Contents

• Customer Reviews & Their Benefits

Best Customer and Product Review Sites

Customer review sites for b2c companies.

• Customer Review Sites for B2B Companies

Customer Review Sites for Both B2B & B2C Companies

Other places for consumer reviews, customer reviews.

Customer reviews are pieces of feedback given to a business based on a customer's experience with the organization. These reviews can be public or private and are collected by either the company or third-party review sites. By obtaining and analyzing customer reviews, businesses can measure customer satisfaction and improve their customer relations.

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45 email & social media templates to ask for referrals and spread the word about referral programs

• Email Templates to Ask for a Referral
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Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Benefits of Customer Reviews

There are two major reasons why customer reviews are important.

1. Customer reviews are a learning opportunity for your business.

Negative or neutral reviews provide your company with an opportunity to learn and develop. You can see exactly where your business is failing to meet customer needs and remove common roadblocks in the customer journey .

For particularly poor reviews, reps can follow up with these customers and prevent potential churn. They can highlight specific pain points and craft personalized responses geared to specific problems. This makes your customer service team appear more invested in your customers' goals, which results in fewer negative reviews and increased customer retention.

2. Customer reviews are marketing and sales tools for your business.

The other major reason for obtaining reviews is the opportunity to share them with potential customers. Positive reviews can be used as customer testimonials during lead acquisition and can help you add more contacts to your CRM . In fact, 91% of consumers read at least one review before purchasing a product. So, don't just pat yourself on the back the next time you get a five-star review; Make sure everyone knows how good a job your company is doing.

With that in mind, it's not safe to assume we all know where to track down those positive customer reviews. I mean, we might all be able to rattle off one or two sites ("Yelp! And I think you can get them to show up in Google Maps, too?"), but we don't exactly have a laundry list of options at our disposal

Check out our list of the best product review websites for B2B and B2C companies. Keep in mind that every industry has niche sites, too. For instance, those in the restaurant industry may want to be on UrbanSpoon or OpenTable. This blog post won't get into sites that are specific to one industry, but it will provide review sites that apply to businesses in almost any industry.

• Amazon Customer Reviews
• Consumer Reports
• Consumer Affairs
• TripAdvisor
• Google My Business
• Influenster
• HubSpot's App Marketplace
• FinancesOnline
• Compare Camp
• TrustRadius
• Salesforce AppExchange
• Better Business Bureau
• Facebook Ratings and Reviews
• Top Ten Reviews
• Your Own Website

1. Amazon Customer Reviews

Amazon was one of the first online stores to allow consumers to post reviews of products in 1995 , and it remains one of the most important resources for consumers looking to make informed purchase decisions. Even if people can and do buy a product elsewhere, if it's sold on Amazon.com — unless it's gasoline or drug paraphernalia , that is — then many people will look up its Amazon review before they decide to buy.

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What's going to separate your product from one that looks just like it? Those shiny gold stars and good customer reviews. Products are rated on a five-star rating scale, which is broken down by the percentage of reviews per star, followed by most helpful customer reviews and most recent customer reviews.

Benefits of Amazon Customer Reviews:

• Amazon has over 300 million users who can see your review.
• Amazon's rating system is straightforward and easy to understand.
• Amazon offers a product ranking feature that rates your product's popularity.
• Amazon users are loyal — 22% won't look at competitors if they discovered the product on Amazon.

2. Wirecutter

Part of the New York Times, Wirecutter is an excellent resource for customers looking for honest, independent product reviews. All products go through rigorous testing by the Wirecutter team so readers can rest assured that their recommendations are legit.

From a business perspective, there isn't much you can do to influence ratings on this site, but it should encourage your brand to make its products the best they can be.

Benefits of Wirecutter:

• Reviews on Wirecutter are in-depth and highly researched.
• Although Wirecutter earns commission through affiliate links, they do not earn if readers return a product they recommended that they are dissatisfied with — keeping reviewers honest.
• Wirecutter gets about 12 million readers per month and serves as excellent promotion should your brand get chosen as one of its top picks.

3. Angi (Formerly Angie's List)

Geared toward U.S.-based service businesses, Angi is a "higher-end" review site, because users actually have to pay for membership. But you get what you pay for. The reviews, given on an A–F scale, are typically very well-thought-out — not a lot of that ranting and raving that's more common on free review sites. The reviews can't be anonymous, which helps cut down on fake or misrepresentative reviews, and companies are allowed to respond to the reviews posted about them, too.

It's free to set up a page for your company. Once you have yours, encourage your customers who are on Angie's List to leave reviews there — members are the only ones allowed to do it!

Benefits of Angie's List:

• Reviews on Angi are typically of high-quality since users need to pay to use the site and can't post anonymously.
• Even though this is a paid subscription service, it's free to list your company on Angi.
• If a customer has a bad experience with a recommended provider, Angi will work with both the customer and the company to resolve the issue.

Have customers located in Australia? CHOICE is an independent, member-funded consumer advocacy website based in Australia. It independently evaluates products and provides detailed reviews to its members.

The bulk of its work involves consumer rights, exposing shady industry tactics, as well as providing product reviews. In addition, it allow members to rate and discuss specific products and services with other CHOICE members. If you have customers in Australia, we recommend encouraging those who are on CHOICE to leave reviews there.

Benefits of Choice:

• Choice posts over 200,000 reviews each year and serves about 2,400 institutions worldwide.
• Since Choice evaluates products and services independently, its reviews are unbiased.
• Choice has a "Choice Picks" page where you can see the best products that it recommends.

5. Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a fast-growing, community-driven consumer review platform based in Denmark, although it has expanded out of Europe into 65 countries, including the U.S. The platform for businesses helps companies from all over the world proactively collect customer reviews. It's the customers who write both product and seller reviews, keeping it third-party verified.

While there is a basic version for free (this lets you create a profile page and collect customer reviews), the paid versions let you create customizable review invitations, share ratings and reviews on social media, and link review data to your internal business systems.

Benefits of Trustpilot:

• Over 500,000 websites are rated on Trustpilot.
• Trustpilot uses its own review system to rate its website. Based on about 136,000 reviews, Trustpilot is rated four stars out of five.
• Trustpilot has advanced SEO features that help your website rank higher on SERPs when customers leave reviews for your company.
• Trustpilot can be integrated with Shopify, Magento, and MailChimp.

6. TestFreaks

Similar to TrustPilot, the Swedish-based TestFreaks helps companies proactively collect customer reviews and write seller reviews to complement them.

Another cool addition? Its question and answer feature, which lets prospective customers post questions and receive answers directly from your customer service team.

Benefits of TestFreaks:

• TestFreaks has 100 million crawled reviews from over 15,000 sources.
• TestFreaks provides a content moderation team that analyzes content in over 20 languages.
• TestFreaks has an import feature where you can upload external customer reviews into its website.

Which? is an independent consumer review organization that tests and reviews products and then writes about them. Unlike Angie's List, it's the folks at Which? who write the reviews — not the customers. They don't accept submissions for product testing or survey inclusion, but they do encourage people to let them know about their products and services by emailing [email protected] .

While this leaves less room for you to influence whether your products end up on their site, it's still worth knowing about and checking in on this popular site, especially if you have customers in the U.K. The website has product reviews for everything from dishwashers and tablets to cars and credit cards. It tests and reviews all these products, and then writes about both its methodologies and results. It also surveys customers for things like the best and worst firms for customer service .

A lot of its content is free, but customers can become members for £10.75 per month to get access to a "Best Buys" and "Don't Buy" list, the latest reviews of products from its test labs, and access to its consumer legal advice service.

Benefits of Which?:

• Which? offers more than 8,000 free reviews.
• Which? tests and reviews more than 3,600 new products every year.
• To prove that it's impartial, Which? provides a video that shows users how it tests and reviews each product.
• Which? is 100% independent. It doesn't accept freebies from product manufactures or retailers so its reviews remain unbiased.
• Which? offers a "Safety Alert" feature that notifies users when a product is deemed unsafe. There's also a "Brand Alert" feature that lets you know if a brand has a history of creating unsafe products.

8. Consumer Reports

A nonprofit organization, Consumer Reports is an independent product-testing organization that runs unbiased tests to rate and recommend products. It has reviewed over 7.7 million products, accept no advertising, and pay for all products that it tests. (Fun fact: The company buys and tests 80 cars each year! ) This is about as legitimate as it gets. As such, there's not much you can do here "except" if you sell a product, make sure it's really, really good.

If nothing else, you could take this website as a lesson in excellent content creation. For each product it reviews, it provides the review criteria, product overviews, a buying guide, and social sharing buttons. It's all quite comprehensive and, well, helpful. Pretty much the key to great content, am I right?

Benefits of Consumer Reports:

• Consumer Reports has over 63 testing facilities — including its 327-acre auto test center.
• Consumer Reports has spent over $30 million on testing and rating products.
• The company plans to test more than 8,500 new products in 2021.
• There are over eight product categories to choose from — each having several subcategories within them.
• Consumer Reports provides an overall score for each product, so you know exactly how it compares to other products in its category.

9. Consumer Affairs

Consumer Affairs is a for-profit organization that reviews companies using an “overall satisfaction rating." This average is scored on a one to five-star scale that's updated every time a new review is submitted. Each company's page provides a list of all its reviews, which includes the consumer's star rating as well as a short explanation for its score.

Consumer Affairs also allows users to submit review recordings, which are two-minute videos where people talk about their experience with a brand. This makes the review much more compelling because you can actually see the person talk and express their genuine feelings about the company.

Benefits of Consumer Affairs:

• Consumer Affairs offers a "trending" section where you can view its lastest and most popular reviews.
• Consumer Affairs provides a demo for brands looking to buy a subscription to its service.
• The "Review Feed" feature allows you to research all of your customer reviews in one, scrolling feed.
• Consumer Affairs has a "Video Review" option where customers can record themselves giving a review.

10. TripAdvisor

If you're in the travel, hotel, airline, entertainment, or restaurant industries, you'll want to check out the reviews on the popular website, TripAdvisor. As the largest travel site in the world, it has over 225 million reviews, opinions, and photos taken by travelers. It also has some awesome content on low airfares, travel guides, rental listings, and advice forums for pretty much every location in the world you could possibly imagine. A lot of people look there before booking a trip.

The key to a successful profile on TripAdvisor is making it as close to the top of the popularity index as possible, so that people searching for information in a specific place see your listing. According to TripAdvisor , the popularity ranking algorithm is based on three key components: quantity, quality, and recency of reviews. Here's an excerpt of the advice they give businesses looking to improve their ranking:

"Quantity : Ask your guests to write reviews, and use our management center tools to remind them after they check out. Offering incentives for reviews is against the rules, though — take a look at our policy to make sure you understand what is and isn't okay.

Quality : Guests who enjoyed first class hospitality and a memorable experience are more likely to write positive reviews. Monitor what previous reviewers have written to see what worked and did not work best for your property so you can maintain and improve your service.

Recency : Recent reviews factor more strongly on your popularity rankings and older reviews have less impact on a hotel's ranking over time. Once again, encourage guests to write reviews to keep fresh content rolling in."

Benefits of TripAdvisor:

• TripAdvisor has collected over 887 million reviews for eight million companies.
• TripAdvisor Plus gives you access to discount hotel pricing for over 100,000 locations.
• The average TripAdvisor Plus member saves about $350 the first time they use their membership.
• TripAdvisor Business Advantage showcases your company's best reviews so customers see them first when reviewing your profile.

Yelp is a free review site that lets consumers rate businesses on a five-star scale. Any business can set up a profile on Yelp for free, and users can set up their own free profiles to review a business. You're free to respond to reviewers, too, but we recommend taking a balanced and polite approach to any negative reviews you receive, as Yelpers are in a pretty tight-knit community.

Yelp has also come under fire over the past few years for some slightly shady practices, like incentivizing businesses to advertise with them in exchange for gaming the search results for their business ("Pay us money and we'll push bad reviews down!"). Savvier consumers have learned to look at Yelp reviews as a whole and with the reviewer's clout in mind, instead of getting turned off by a business because of one bad listing.

That being said, it's still to your benefit to get a constant stream of positive online reviews coming to your business' Yelp account so happy customers are always at the top of your review feed — especially if you're a location-based business. Yelp profile information contains things like store hours and location information, so your profile will often turn up when people Google your business.

Benefits of Yelp:

• Yelp has roughly 184 million monthly users worldwide.
• Anyone can sign up for Yelp and it's fairly easy for customers to leave a review — making it a good source of customer feedback.
• Yelp users are a tight-knit community. Active users will provide a lot of detailed feedback for your business.
• Research shows an increase of one star in your Yelp rating can increase revenue by 5-9%.

12. Google My Business

You know those reviews that show up when you search Google for a business? Yeah, those things are on this list in a big way.

Google's Pigeon algorithm update uses distance and location ranking parameters to deliver improved local search results. So, in order for your business' website to be properly optimized for search, you'll want to set up verified accounts with local directories — especially Google's, called "Google My Business." Getting reviews, comments, pictures, and so on, especially on Google, can give you a boost in search. Only verified local Google+ pages can respond to reviews.

An added bonus? Google Maps pulls that information and those reviews into the app, so having a lot of content in there will make your business look more reputable.

Benefits of Google My Business:

• Google is the world's largest search engine and controls over 90% of the search engine marketshare.
• Google can localize your review search, meaning it will only show results for businesses located in the area that you searched.
• It's free to create and customize your Google Business Profile. Setting up only takes a few minutes.
• Nearly 10% of Google's search algorithm is influenced by Google Reviews. The more positive reviews that you have, the higher your business will rank on SERPs.

13. Influenster

If you sell consumer products, Influenster is a review site you'll want to make sure you've covered.

Influenster features customer reviews and news about consumer products — primarily skincare, beauty, makeup, hair, and other health and body products. Visitors can search the site by brand name or by a specific product they're looking for, and Influenster links to websites where visitors can buy the products.

The reviews are comprehensive and feature lots of detail and images to accompany them. So if you're in the beauty business, consider directing your shoppers to review your products on Influenster to help attract new customers, too.

Benefits of Influenster:

• There are over six million users who are actively leaving reviews on Influenster.
• Influenster users have left over 50 million organic reviews on the website.
• Influenster sends its users "VoxBoxes" where they can test out new products for free.
• Influenster helps businesses create "sampling campaigns" where you send users a sample of your product then follow up afterwards to sell them the complete version.

Review Websites for B2B Companies

14. hubspot's app marketplace.

HubSpot's App Marketplace is a space where businesses can browse through extensions, tools, and apps that connect to their HubSpot account. Some apps are built by HubSpot, while others were designed by partners and third-party organizations. Offering all of these tools in one place makes it easier for HubSpot users to add new features to their accounts that may not be included with their subscription.

The nice part about this customer review site is that it's categorized based on the product you're looking to install. There's individual sections for Marketing, Sales, and Service tools, as well as other sections like finance, workflow integrations, popular apps, and more.

Reviews are rated on a five-star scale and customers have to answer questions like, "What did you like about this product? What did you dislike about it?" and "What problem did this product solve?" These questions provide more context into the review so you know exactly why a customer rated a business or product the way they did.

Benefits of HubSpot App Marketplace:

• There are more than 500 apps featured in HubSpot's App Marketplace.
• Product pages not only list reviews, but also pricing info, notable features, and account requirements for downloading each tool.
• Customers have the option to upvote reviews that they find helpful.
• The reviews on this site provide "quality ratings" for features like ease of use, functionality, purchase value, and customer support.

15. FinancesOnline

FinancesOnline is one of the fastest-growing platforms for B2B & SaaS software reviews, with more than 2,800,000 visitors every month . It gathers thousands of user reviews every month, with each reviewer authenticated via LinkedIn to ensure only actual users share their experience with the community. User reviews are based on detailed surveys, which offer a really in-depth look at each tool. Algorithmic analysis is also a foundation for quarterly reports in the most popular categories. To balance the user perspectives, each review also includes a detailed analysis prepared by the internal team of B2B software experts, who analyze key usability factors such as features, integrations, mobile support, etc. This evaluation is then combined into the unique SmartScore™ system, which gives readers an easy reference on what the experts' community thinks about each business solution. As an added bonus, the product pages rank high in Google, so getting a few positive user reviews on their site could be beneficial for your brand recognition.

Benefits of FinancesOnline:

• FinancesOnline has roughly three million visitors to its site every month and over ten thousand detailed company reviews.
• The SmartScore system grades products on several factors including functionality, collaboration features, customization, ease of use, and more.
• FinancesOnline uses a customer satisfaction algorithm that calculates an overall score for a business based on reviews, comments, and opinions that are posted on various social media channels.
• The "Verified Quality Seal" let's users know that a business or product is reliable and trustworthy.

16. Compare Camp

Compare Camp is a B2B review site that deals primarily with business software. If you're looking to introduce a new tool or system to your company, Compare Camp can help you pinpoint the exact software that's right for you. Not only does this site show you how other people feel about a specific product, but it also lays out the key benefits of the product as well as any new trends that may be occurring in that particular industry.

When you first navigate to the site, Compare Camp provides you with a list of software categories to choose from. After you select a section, it gives you a description of the category along with a detailed list of product and company options. Compare Camp also explains any varying types of products within that section as well as the top features you should look for when buying that software. It's a very handy guide to have especially when you're considering a product that you haven't purchased before.

Benefits of Compare Camp:

• Over 100,000 companies use Compare Camp every month.
• There are over 25 product categories to choose from, including CRM Software, Sales Software, eCommerce Software, and more.
• Each category provides a "Top 10" list of the best software available in that section.
• If you're not familiar with a product, each category provides a brief description of what the software is and why you might want it.

17. G2 Crowd

If your business sells software, you'll want to be sure you have a presence on G2 Crowd. Every month, more than 5 million people looking to buy software read the 1+ million user reviews on this website so they can make better purchasing decisions.

G2 Crowd operates kind of like Yelp, but in a specific niche. Companies are reviewed on a five-star scale, and reviews cover everything from setup and ease of use to security and support. Reviewers answer questions like "What do you like best?"; "What do you dislike?"'; and "Recommendations to others considered the product." Also, you can upvote and downvote others' reviews.

Benefits of G2 Crowd:

• There are nearly 1.4 million reviews featured on G2 Crowd.
• G2 Crowd offers a video review option where users can record themselves leaving a review.
• When a customer leaves a review, you can see whether the customer is a verified user and how active they are on the platform.
• G2 Crowd allows businesses to request reviews from customers. This helps you build a pool of customer reviews for your company.

18. TrustRadius

Like G2 Crowd, TrustRadius is an online review site for software businesses. Reviewers on the site are authenticated via LinkedIn to make sure they're users (although the reviews themselves can still be anonymous), which allows users to see what their LinkedIn connections are saying about particular pieces of software on TrustRadius. This adds a layer of trust for someone reading the site.

You can use the site to browse reviews of individual companies, or compare two companies side-by-side to compare their five-star ratings, screenshots of their products, pricing details, and user comments from reviewers.

In addition to the company reviews, TrustRadius has put together a whole bunch of buyer guides for categories including talent management software, business intelligence software, core HR software, social media, and A/B testing to help people find the right product for them based on hundreds of reviews and user ratings.

Benefits of TrustRadius:

• There are over 300,000 customer reviews posted on TrustRadius.
• TrustRadius does not sell leads or ad placement. This keeps reviews unbiased and vendors can't skew results.
• TrustRadius reviews are more in-depth. On average, each review has more than 400 words.
• Each customer review is vetted by TrustRadius' research team and is evaluated for quality, depth, and detail.

19. GoodFirms

GoodFirms is a B2B research and review platform that focuses on connecting service seekers with the right software and service providers.

GoodFirms analyzes the top-performing companies and software solutions based on three important pieces of criteria: Quality, Reliability, and Ability. These metrics are further segmented into authentic feedback by customers, a portfolio of the company, its market penetration, years of experience, and serviceability. The companies are then ranked based on their cumulative research scores. GoodFirms offers quick filters to sort the service providers by their hourly rate, location, and number of employees.

Benefits of GoodFirms:

• GoodFirms has over 30,000 customer reviews and 60,000 business profiles on its website.
• GoodFirms offers a discussion platform where customers can form an online community and talk about specific products and brands.
• GoodFirms provides over one thousand unique case studies that outline new trends and technology emerging in your industry.
• When searching for a specific company or product, customer reviews can be filtered by device, location, and industry.

20. Salesforce AppExchange

Have an app on the Salesforce AppExchange? Then you'll want to keep track of your app's ratings and reviews there.

Reviews are based on a five-star rating system, and each app has reviews listed with the most helpful positive review and most helpful negative reviews first, followed by all reviews, from which users can filter by rating, date, and helpfulness. This customer review site has embraced transparency, letting users access thousands of reviews and see the number of downloads with just a few clicks.

Benefits of Salesforce AppExchange:

• There are over five thousand products that are listed in Salesforce AppExchange.
• This site features a live chat option where you can speak with someone if you have questions about a business, product, or review.
• Users in Salesforce AppExchange can comment, like, and report other customer reviews.

21. Better Business Bureau

A nonprofit site, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) evaluates all types of businesses against a set of best practices for how businesses should treat the public. It doesn't directly recommend or endorse any businesses, products, or services; it simply provides the public with information about businesses, and whether they have met the BBB's accreditation standards. It will also review both accredited and non-accredited businesses.

A business' profile listing on the BBB contains general overview information, like a short company bio and the company's accreditation status, a history of any complaints made about the business and whether they were resolved, customer reviews, and the BBB's A - F rating of the business.

Benefits of the Better Business Bureau:

• There are more than 5.4 million business profiles listed on the Better Business Bureau.
• As a government-sponsored organization, you can trust that its reviews are unbiased.
• Attaining your BBB accreditation shows that your business is reliable and trustworthy.
• Last year in the United States, BBB reviews were accessed more than 120 million times.
• 88% of consumers prefer to do business with a company that is BBB accredited.

22. Glassdoor

Glassdoor is an employee review site that helps anyone — from prospective employees to prospective customers to investors — get an idea of what a company is really like from the inside. In other words, it helps measure the more qualitative factors of things like valuation.

Employees can share what it's like to interview and work at their companies, and the site shows visitors which companies are rated highest by their employees. Many employers use it to build their employment brand so they can target and recruit candidates, but you can also use the reviews to share ideas internally for improvement among your management team.

Creating an employer account is free, and it's easy to track and respond to reviews. For example, you can set up alerts so you get an email each time a new review is posted so you can acknowledge and respond to each one.

Benefits of Glassdoor:

• There are about 90 million reviews, salaries, and insights listed on Glassdoor.
• Over 60 million people use Glassdoor every month to research a company or provider.
• Reviews are left by employees who have experience working with that company.
• When a company responds to a review, it shows you the name of the employee as well as their job title.

Similar to Glassdoor, Blind's platform provides a place employees can leave feedback about what it was like to work at a particular company — though it focuses on the tech industry. On the site, professionals can anonymously communicate with other members, ask questions, provide company insights, and get advice.

What sets Blind apart from its competitors is that it feels like you're dropping in on a water cooler conversation in your office rather than a standard review site.

Benefits of Blind:

• Employers can view discussions in real-time from verified employees.
• Get authentic, anonymous, and unfiltered reviews.
• Over 7 million users across 300,000 companies.

Manta is a marketing agency that also functions as a customer review site primarily features small- to medium-sized businesses. Rather than displaying the top customer reviews right away, Manta organizes search results based on the relevance of your keyword. Then it displays the list of companies with their contact information, so users can quickly connect with a business.

Manta is different than most review sites because it focuses more on connecting people than it does on reviewing products and services. To find customer reviews, you need to select a business, go to their individual listing page, and scroll past their features and products before seeing a review. That way, customers use the reviews as one of the final selling points for purchasing a product or service.

On Manta, the goal is to rank your business as high as possible for each relevant keyword that users can search. So long as your company is in the top search results, you'll have a higher chance of connecting with leads using this site.

Benefits of Manta:

• Manta has data on 35 million businesses spanning across 149 countries.
• Every month, Manta adds 14,000 new listings to its website.
• It's easy to leave reviews on Manta. You just fill out a star rating and write a short description justifying your rating.

25. Capterra

If you're a SaaS business, Capterra is a review site that evaluates software sold by B2C and B2B companies. It has an easy-to-use internal search engine which lets users search for software based on industry, company, or software type. Once a search processes, Capterra displays a list of companies relevant to your keyword and a brief summary describing their product(s).

Users can also compare products on the site. Capterra has a "compare to" feature which lets you select up to four companies and displays the benefits of each side-by-side. You can see everything from ease-of-use to the quality of their customer support, all in one comprehensive view. This makes it easy and efficient for users to find software that best fits their needs.

Benefits of Capterra:

• There are over 1.5 million validated customer reviews posted on Capterra.
• Capterra provides 800 categories to choose from as well as reviews for over 50 thousand products.
• Before clicking into a review, Capterra provides a brief overview of the company, its products, and its mission.
• Capterra provides a pros and cons list for each business profile. This gives users a snapshot of the best and worst features for each company.

26. HundredX

HundredX is a review site and a customer service tool . Businesses create an account on the website and ask customers to leave feedback after working with them. HundredX streamlines the process by providing tools that automatically send out surveys and collect feedback on behalf of the business. With this site, customer services teams don't have to manually seek out reviews or scan third-party sites to obtain customer feedback .

The benefit of signing up for HundredX is the reviews are private. If you get a bad review, leads can't see that feedback and be influenced by the negative comments. This gives your company a chance to correct your mistake before losing potential customers.

Benefits of HundredX:

• HundredX provides profiles for over 1,600 businesses spanning across more than 60 unique industries.
• HundredX offers incentives for users to leave reviews. Roughly 90% of its users participate on a regular basis.
• HundredX's tools helps you create an automated system for creating surveys and collecting customer reviews. This provides an ongoing stream of feedback as you continue to grow your customer base.

Online reviews also exist on sites that aren't necessarily built just to publish online reviews. Some businesses use their social presence and website to encourage online reviews ... and some brands just get them unsolicited, for better or for worse.

Here are some sites that, if you choose to (please, choose to) can serve as additional hubs for online reviews. And they're awesome, because they have enormous reach, and you have some — if not entire — control over these properties.

27. Facebook Ratings & Reviews

Did you know there's a place on Facebook for fans to leave ratings and reviews of your business? There sure is ... it's named, aptly, Facebook Ratings & Reviews. It appears on the left-hand side of your Facebook Page, and you can't move or remove it like you can other parts of your Page.

Anyone logged into Facebook can post a rating or review of a business. All they have to do is go to the Reviews section of your Page, click the grey stars to choose a rating, and then write an optional review. They can make that review public, visible to friends, or visible only to them.

Benefits of Facebook Ratings & Reviews:

• There are more than 2.7 billion users who are active on Facebook each month.
• To collect reviews on Facebook, all you need to do is set up a Facebook Business Profile.
• 2/3 of Facebook users visit a local business's Facebook Profile at least once a week.
• Facebook is a platform designed for communication. This increases the chance of having productive conversations with those who leave a review for your business.

28. Twitter

The ridiculously fast-paced nature of Twitter makes it seem like a weird place to try to accumulate reviews. But while users might not always search for reviews directly on Twitter (unless you started some kind of review hashtag, perhaps), tweets are still indexed in search results. That means a user's tweet, whether complimentary or less-than, could pop up in the SERPs when someone's searching for reviews on your business.

Not only that — there are things you can actively do with the positive tweets coming at you. For instance, we tested the element of social proof on conversions here at HubSpot, attaching three tweets that gave positive reviews on an ebook we were promoting at the time. Guess what happened? The CTA with the three tweets converted better than the CTA with no tweets. If you start to "Favorite" tweets that could serve as positive reviews in the future, it'll be easier to find them when you want to use them in your marketing.

Benefits of Twitter:

• There are over 300 million daily active users on Twitter.
• Twitter lets you communicate both publicly and privately with users. This means you can respond to customers on your feed, but also move the conversation to direct messaging if needed.
• Feedback on Twitter is very immediate. When customers want to voice an opinion about your business, they can do it almost instantly on Twitter.
• Twitter reviews are qualitative. You don't have to worry about an overall rating or satisfaction score when customers leave reviews.

29. Foursquare

Yes, people still use Foursquare. In fact, a ton of people are still using it: racking up 55 million monthly active users (MAUs) to be exact.

Not only can you check-in to different locations and businesses using the app, you can also leave reviews on Foursquare — making it another interesting platform where your brand or business could be discovered by potential customers looking for suggestions — and five-star reviews.

If your business depends on walk-in foot traffic — restaurants, coffee shops, shopping boutiques, etc. — make sure your Foursquare business profile is filled out and updated so people can find you when they go to check-in — and then ask your visitors to review you there.

Benefits of Foursquare:

• There are over 55 million monthly active users on Foursquare.
• Over two million businesses are using Foursquare to connect with customers.
• Foursquare provides marketing tools for your business. You can give special promotions and discounts to existing customers as well as provide tips for new users who are visiting your business for the first time.

30. Superpages

Superpages lets you search for businesses based on their distance from you, overall rating, industry subcategory, online videos, and even promotional coupons.

Once you find a company that you like, this site shows you where the business is on the map as well as a review summary outlining all of the reviews left for the organization. Visitors can quickly assess what other users are saying about the business and use the coupon links to get the same deals as other customers.

Benefits of Superpages:

• Customers primarily use the map/location features to search for businesses. This is ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses that many only be located in a few areas.
• Each company profile has a "view services" tab that explains exactly what the organization has to offer.
• Superpages provides a service that evaluates your brand's online reputation for free.
• Superpages is centered around local participation. So, you can trust that reviews left for your business are coming from customers in your area.

31. Top Ten Reviews

It’s hard to resist a good top 10 list. Top Ten Reviews satisfies this craving by giving visitors a list of 10, detailed reviews for every post on the site. These posts have a wide topic range as well, touching on everything from mattresses to landscaping to laptops.

There's also a "trending" bar that shows you categories that are currently popular on the site. As a business owner, this can give you an idea of what consumers are buying more of at that particular moment.

Benefits of Top Ten Reviews:

• Top Ten Reviews has reviews for products ranging everywhere from gas-powered lawnmowers to eyeglasses.
• Each review has an "our verdict" section that summarizes the pros and cons of each product as well as whether or not the website would recommend it.
• For each product, Top Ten Reviews provides the latest deals available and links users to where they can find them.
• Top Ten Reviews are very detailed. They have sections outlining the product's features, its specs, overall performance, user testimonials, and more.

32. Your Own Website

Finally, the one place where you have total and utter control: your website. It's an excellent place to publicize reviews you receive (perhaps embed some of those tweets you favorited?).

You could carve out a section of your website dedicated just to reviews and testimonials , and even include a form so happy customers can submit their unsolicited reviews.

But if you're actively campaigning for positive online reviews and you encounter happy customers who want to leave you a positive review but don't have accounts on sites like Yelp, Angie's List, or Google, it's handy to have a place on your website to publish their kind words. Consider adding testimonials to landing pages and product pages, too.

Benefits of your own website:

• You have complete control over the format and rating system for your reviews.
• You can dictate which reviews you want to publish on your website.
• Having reviews on your website is timely. People browsing your site can read your positive reviews as they're shopping for your products.

Which customer review site is best?

The easy answer is all of them. The right answer is a little more subjective.

The best customer review site for your business will be whichever one(s) your customers are using most. The more reviews you obtain, the more you'll learn about your business and how customers feel about you.

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How to spot fake online reviews (with a little help from AI)

AI Strategist and Professor of Digital Strategy, Loughborough University

Vice-Chancellor and President, Loughborough University

Disclosure statement

Nick Hajli is affiliated with Loughborough University. Nick Hajli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Nick Jennings does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Loughborough University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Before you buy something, or visit a new restaurant, or see a new film, you may be tempted to check out the online reviews. Researching what strangers think of the things we might like has become a familiar part of the modern consumer experience.

But how can we know which reviews to trust? Which ones are written by honest customers sharing their genuine experiences, and which ones are posted with ulterior motives?

For while consumer reviews can guide us towards the best products and services, concealed within the shadows are deceptive reviews, meticulously crafted to deceive and manipulate. Fake feedback, you might call it.

A negative fake review may be submitted by a competitor for example, hoping to cast doubt on the quality of a particular product. Or a positive sounding fake review may be designed by someone with a financial interest in a service to give it a dishonest boost in the market.

All of these can have a dramatic effect on a business’s public profile.

In 2023, the popular travel website Tripadvisor experienced a staggering influx of user-generated content, with more than 30 million reviews submitted by more than 17 million members. But within this vast sea of apparent customer feedback, 1.3 million reviews were flagged as fraudulent and subsequently removed .

Additionally, 33,194 businesses faced penalties for engaging in deceptive practices . And in the UK, government research has found that between 11% to 15% of reviews in specific product categories, such as consumer electronics and home and kitchenware, were thought to be fraudulent.

Cracking the code

To combat fake reviews, companies including Amazon have started using artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent the publication of hundreds of millions of potentially fraudulent reviews, ensuring the credibility of the platform.

But research suggests that there are quite a few things consumers can do to protect themselves.

Trust your instincts: When perusing reviews, rely on your intuition. Authentic feedback tends to strike a balance, presenting both positive and negative aspects of the product or service. If a review appears excessively positive or overly critical without substantiation, exercise caution.

Read between the lines: Pay attention to the language and tone used in reviews. Genuine feedback often sounds personal, reflecting the reviewer’s unique experience. Beware of reviews that seem generic, repetitive, or excessively promotional, as they may be deceptive endorsements.

Validate the source: Scrutinise the reviewer’s credentials to ascertain their credibility. Genuine reviewers typically furnish specific details about their interaction with the product or service, such as features, delivery timelines, or customer service encounters. Approach reviews which lack specific information with scepticism.

Look for patterns: Remain vigilant for anomalous patterns in reviews, such as sudden surges of positive or negative feedback within a brief time frame. These anomalies could indicate orchestrated attempts to manipulate ratings rather than genuine consumer experiences.

Review the reviewers

So in the same way that you may protect your computer from viruses, or stay alert to attempts to get hold of your personal information, it’s important to keep yourself updated on common methods used to deceive consumers. Well-known platforms such as Amazon and Tripadvisor usually offer guidelines for spotting fake feedback, while consumer advocacy groups and online forums dedicated to consumer awareness can provide valuable insights.

Websites and platforms also have a responsibility to make sure users are receiving trustworthy information. And advances in AI technology have introduced new tools that can assist in identifying and flagging potential fake reviews.

These AI-powered solutions play a critical role in preserving consumer trust and market integrity by using machine learning to analyse patterns and identify suspicious interactions in social media platforms.

Through investment in this kind of technology, companies can more effectively combat the spread of fake reviews and maintain the credibility of their review systems. They can also bolster trust and confidence in the authenticity of the reviews provided.

In a digital world, being able to differentiate between genuine feedback and deceptive endorsements is vital for making informed decisions. And if you do encounter a review you suspect to be fake, it’s always worth flagging it to the platform or website where it was posted. By alerting authorities, you’ll strengthen the integrity of online review systems – and help your fellow consumers make better decisions.

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Alexander M. reviewed GlobalRose

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“Very fast and easy process, wide selection of flowers and vases!”

jeremy Y. reviewed PapersOwl

Great writer!

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Speedy Mags Great

“Jake is wonderful to deal with. I. Ve ordered many magazines through him and always come through.”

Justin G. reviewed 1StopBedrooms

After shopping around at various places we came across...

“After shopping around at various places we came across 1stopbedrooms and their prices...”

“After shopping around at various places we came across 1stopbedrooms and their prices were by far...”

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Beautiful roses - vivid color

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“The roses are beautiful and in nice quality. They were delivered in great condition and on time....”

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Nextiva, Best VOIP

“Nextiva solves our communication challenges by offering a unified platform, reliable support, and affordability. This streamlines our processes, ensures prompt assistance...”

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Fantastic Service

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Timely and good product

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6 websites you can trust for product reviews and ratings

If you’ve spent any time researching a product online , you came across a lot of resources (and if you didn't find what you were looking for, you might have given up). Whether it’s a baby stroller , educational toys for your toddler, a comfortable pull-out sofa, or the best deal on Apple AirPods , there is no shortage of brands vying for your money in any product category. Since most products require an investment, you not only want the best quality you can find but assurance that it will last.

Sourcing the best recommendations combined with adding extended warranty protection will result in not only quality products at competitive price points, but coverage to protect your product for years to come. So before you start researching and shopping around, subscribe to Mulberry Unlimited . For just $9.99 a month, you'll get coverage for all your online purchases under the same product protection plan .

Now let's talk about finding the best quality products , and what online resources you can rely on to provide solid product reviews, ratings and recommendations. We’ve compiled a list of six online resources known for providing accurate and unbiased information, from product review blogs to consumer surveys. These can be your go-to sources when you're looking for trustworthy information on the best products, regardless of the product category.

1. Consumer Reports

For unbiased, data-driven information, Consumer Reports is a fail-safe option for product ratings and reviews. As a non-profit organization, Consumer Reports has been an unbiased source of information for consumers since 1936 (before online reviews were even popular!). Consumer Reports gathers data from surveys, tests, and consumer reviews, and compiles recommendations for the best products with the goal of providing trustworthy information for consumers.

You can search the over 7.7 million products that Consumer Reports has reviewed to get an assessment of the top competing products in a specific category, a score for each product that was tested or reviewed, and other valuable insights to help you make the most informed decision possible. By searching for things like "Consumer Reports mattresses" or "Consumer Reports dishwashers", you can get tons of great product reviews.

2. Wirecutter

Now owned and operated by the New York Times, Wirecutter is another trusted source for unbiased product reviews. With Wirecutter, you’ll find recommendations and reviews based on months of research, analysis, and input from experts and consumers alike. The Wirecutter deals and Wirecutter gift guides are also very popular around the holidays, providing recommendations by gift recipients and product category.

Although Wirecutter requires a paid subscription for unlimited access, you'll still find plenty of valuable insights for free. Wirecutter can help you avoid splurging on products that don’t live up to the hype, have features you don’t need, or don't hold up to normal wear and tear .

This is also why extended warranties  are a cost-effective way to extend the life of your products. Shopping with the Mulberry extension and taking advantage of online resources to do you research can help you save money initially and down the road.

3. Good Housekeeping

Good Housekeeping offers more than just food and lifestyle information. While many people might be more familiar with the Good Housekeeping magazine, the Good Housekeeping Institute test thousands of home, beauty, tech, clothing, food and health products to find the best products for you and your family. You'll find product reviews on everything from appliances to mattresses to outdoor living spaces.

Good Housekeeping is based in New York City and takes the art of product reviews very seriously. With staff members from dozens of different disciplines including engineering, culinary, biology, and chemistry experts (and many others), the Good Housekeeping Institute spends each day thoroughly testing thousands of products in order to give you thorough, unbiased review.

4. Popular Mechanics

Popular Mechanics magazine is a publication that has been around for over 100 years, and along with its website has become a trusted source for countless consumers when it comes to product reviews. From technology to tools , you’ll find reliable, extensively-tested reviews that you can trust (as other consumers have since 1902!).

They also cover a wide range of products like fitness equipment , storage solutions, office furniture and kitchen appliances . There's even a Popular Mechanics for kids subscription, which provides lots of fun activities and games for children. If you choose to get a Popular Mechanics subscription, you’ll also enjoy a print copy of their publication, which they send out 6 times per year.

5. TechRadar

If you're looking for advice specifically on tech gear and equipment, that's what you'll find from TechRadar . This resource focuses on everything technology-related, with the goal of being your go-to source for tech-buying advice and everything else you need to buy and enjoy the tech you love.

They have a rigorous review-testing process, looking at long-term value as well. They update and maintain their reviews regularly so you can be sure you're getting up-to-date info, regardless of when a device was released. They say if you can still buy it, it's on their radar. Though they state that they may earn commission if you purchase products through their site, they are also clear that they do not accept payment for product reviews.

6. Honest Product Reviews

Although there’s a bold claim in the name itself, many consumers agree that Honest Product Reviews lives up to its name. From pet-related items to beauty products to electronics , Honest Product Reviews offers unbiased reviews, side-by-side comparisons, and a consumer-friendly format with minimal ads to make your research process a little less painful.

One important detail to note is that Honest Product Reviews does accept compensation from retailers whose products appear on their site. This means that if you choose to click on an Amazon link on their site, chances are they’ll get some kind of commission or receive a benefit in one way or another. While they still provide quality reviews, it is something to keep in the back of your mind.

Bonus resource: Fakespot

While Fakespot doesn't have a content-based website like the other six resources, it will alert you to the quality of a review as you're shopping on retailer websites like Amazon , Walmart , Sephora, eBay, and Best Buy .

When you install the Fakespot Chrome extension, it will provide you with an analysis of existing reviews on the retailer website, giving them an overall grade of A through F based on trustworthiness. You can also choose to further analyze the reviews for a specific product with the Fakespot analyzer.

Protect your purchases with Mulberry Unlimited

Although navigating the world of product reviews can be daunting, there are resources like these to make it less confusing, and more straightforward when it comes to product research.

Additionally, you can subscribe to Mulberry Unlimited to extend the life of your products and ensure that once you do find a quality product, you'll get the maximum value out of it with product protection . 

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I am new to Trust Pilot.

I am new to Trust Pilot. I had some difficulty installing the Trust Pilot widget on my website, p2ptechnologyllc.com, hosted by Go Daddy. The process of requesting tech support was easy and Support Manager US, Noah, worked with me right up to resolution of my issue. And the issue was indeed my issue, not Trust Pilot's. Thank you for your service, Mel Stoddard

Date of experience : May 06, 2024

Trustworthy website to get genuine user…

Trustworthy website to get genuine user experiences. If I ever suspect a website may be fishy I always check trustpilot to see if there are any reviews. It has saved me a few times from fraudulent websites.

I am very appreciative for Trust Pilot

I am very appreciative for Trust Pilot. we need places to go to get information so we can make responsible decisions when we are doing business. these people have saved me time and money. their both very important to all of us. Thank You Trust Pilot!!!

Date of experience : April 26, 2024

Seem to be making every effort with…

Seem to be making every effort with this shower ! ( Lov Holideays ) . Now telling me I'm not the" lead booking " after at at least 10 / 12 attempts to communicate with " somebody " . One phone call to me after 2 months of continuous complaint is not too much to ask . My patience is wearing very thin! - Maya ,Milo,Lizzie + more . When I try to contact " somebody " else says reply . What a joke ! RING me please ,I ask again now for " umpteenth " time ! What part of that do you people Not understand . Full Mark's to " trustpilot " for trying . Sincerely hope u dont have same response from other companies you deal with or you will be here til Xmas - trustpilot 5 stars for perseverance .thank you .

The whole trip was incredible

The whole trip was incredible, we saw more animals than we ever hoped and our guides David was brilliant in his knowledge of the animals. Thank you for your warm reservation when we visit your office and the good selection of the accommodations within the parks. Highly recommend Silver Spark Africa Safari!

Date of experience : April 05, 2024

My experience with trust pilot has been slow and steady

My experience with trust pilot has been fairly limited at this point so I don't really have much to review. Everything seems to be working all right and the use of your program seems user friendly so I'm going to give four stars and that will give me room for improvement if I start noticing and above and beyond type experience.

Date of experience : May 03, 2024

Trust Trustpilot!!

This is a trustful place to look up reviews for companies. I wish I had come here first before purchasing from companies with a bad reputation. I would have saved myself a lot of time, money, and more so a headache! Thank you Trustpilot!!

I think this is a great site to share…

I think this is a great site to share one’s views and experiences with others. I tend to share good experiences more than bad ones because I firmly believe in sending positive karma out into the universe. For negative responses, I prefer to contact the service provider directly to give them the opportunity to improve…

Always read Trust Pilot reviews!

I believe in the way Trust Pilot gives all customers the opportunity to write about their own experiences from whomever they have ordered from. This is comforting for all people to get a good idea of just how good, bad, or indifferent any companies business dealings are. Very useful indeed!

Date of experience : May 05, 2024

MAJOR. FRAUD Conspiracy Wthe ever increasing amount of…

With the ever increasing amount of highly motivated professional SCAMMERS. In operation Trustpilot gives those with genuine grievances to air their experiences . However , it would appear that the Scam I am dealing with is very sophisticated and I would challenge the positive reports . I would challenge Trustpilot to try and make contact with this company . If it is no longer contactable Trustpilot should make this known and rescind all positive items . I have personally had over £300 thousand just disappear over night on 4th May 2024 . The Police said they would contact me within 28 days !! Greta Thornburg has shown a positive report on 4th May , but it related to 2023 . Comments welcome

Review about my experience

I really appreciate the service you are providing. so helpful. I planned to go to Disney land with my kids this holiday but I don’t have any idea about how to do it. so I contacted Mr Dylan about this. He is very good and always spontaneous to all my questions. I had lots of doubts and he answered to all my queries without any hesitation. Also he chose a best holiday deal for me. I’m so glad that I contacted the right travel advisor.

You are held hostage by Trustpilot

As a merchant you are somewhat held hostage by Trustpilot. I've had many fake bad reviews posted by suspended users or competitors and then it's an incredible amount of admin to get them removed. Often you can't. The truth is that anybody can go write a fake review about any company and there's nothing that company can do about it. Their resolution process for this practice is very lacking.

Very useful service to check.

I always use trust pilot to check reviews. it has helped me often. Companies do not want to see negative reports on Trustplot. very useful service..

IN INDIA MY MOTHERS EYE OPERATION WAS…

IN INDIA MY MOTHERS EYE OPERATION WAS ON 15TH APRIL SO I TRIED TO BOOK 2 TIKCETS FROM BUDGET AIR. MUMABI TO ABUDHABI. WHICH WAS NOT GONE THROUGH & STARTED MY REFUND ISSUE. PLEASE BE WARE FOR REFUND FROM THIS BUDGETAIRWAYS BOOKING. I HAD A WORST EXPERINCE WITH REFUND OF MY 34200 INR PAID ON 14 APRIL . ANY BANK ISSUE THEY WILL NOT CONVEY U. WILL KEEP MONEY WITH THEM AT ALL. NO ANY WHATSAPP NUMBER OR CONTACT NUMBER. PLEASE DONT BOOK FROM THIS SITE EVEN FLIGHTS RATES ARE SHOWING CHEAPER . REQUEST YOU ALL ONLINE MEDIA TO BOOK DIRECTLY FROM AIRWAYS SITE.

Very efficient 👍 I like being able to…

Very efficient 👍 I like being able to edit after the fact. Sometimes reviews are done in the heat of the moment and more is said than needs to be. So to edit original saves us all from embarrassment 😜

Date of experience : April 02, 2024

Check with Trustpilot for information on companies.

In this computer age, it is difficult to communicate with anyone if they don't what you to. Therefore, we are not able to fight for our rights. This is where Trustpilot comes to our aid. They are able to help us with their reports about companies that scam us. Its hard lesson for us to learn that there are such people out there. I will definately watch who I buy from in the future.

Truth and honesty

There are a few companies asking for customers to review a product/company that they have engaged with and you read the reviews and to me they sound a bit too good very little negativity or totally over the top(how did I live before I got my woolly hat for my ingrowing toe nail) Trustpilot for me print what I've typed no cutting out of poor reviews or clever editing when you looking to purchase a product having true and honest reviews goes a long way and can make all the difference as to purchase or not. KEEP doing what you are doing it works.

Date of experience : May 02, 2024

Authenticity

I like Trust Pilot but you have repeatedly removed my review for authenticity concerns. It was up more than a week the first time so now I added the invoice info etc. My review is 100% true and accurate. Shop Solar invited me to review so that alone should prove it's real...

Date of experience : April 29, 2024

Scam site know exactly how to flustrate…

Scam site know exactly how to flustrate Conned People ... TP should be able to block these sites immediately ... Light in the Box are professional scam artists who are playing the system in this case for years

Yet ancestry again have let me down

Yet ancestry again have let me down. Yesterday I spent around 5 hours attempting to access my family trees. Only option to start a new tree. Not much use when you have 400 names plus already. Today managed to access trees having written a trustpilot review but cannot access the discount offered as originally the ancestry was a present via a disc. I gave them my credit card but this was not okay. Why I have no idea. Please be aware this company is not easy to deal with.

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Blog – Posted on Tuesday, Sep 24

Get paid to read: 18 legitimate sites that pay reviewers.

Serious question: do you want to get paid to read? You might laugh it off at first, thinking that that sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. You can get paid for spending time on what you love: reading books. 

Of course, the key to this #hack is book reviewing, where you offer your personal opinion of a book after you’re done with it. (If you’d like to learn more, check out this post to discover how to write a book review .) Because books are constantly being published, book reviewers are generally always in demand. 

So whether you’re a voracious reader of nonfiction, genre fiction, classics, or indie books, there’s probably an outlet that’s willing to compensate you if you read (review) for them! Without further ado, here’s a definitive list of the 17 sites that will help you get paid to read. If you want to cut to the chase and find out which of them is the right fit for you, we recommend first taking this quick quiz:

Which review community should you join?

Find out which review community is best for your style. Takes 30 seconds!

Then read on for the full list of all of the ways to get paid while reading!

 1. Kirkus Media

💸 Pay: Freelance basis

👀 More information: Check here

If you’ve ever lingered on a book’s Amazon page before, you’ll have heard of Kirkus Reviews. It’s one of the most respected sources of book reviews out there, publishing many of the blurbs that you’ll see on Amazon, or on the cover of your favorite titles.

You have to wonder: where do all of these reviews come from? That’s where you come into the picture. Kirkus Media lists an open application for book reviewers. As of right now, they’re specifically searching for people who will review English and Spanish-language indie titles. Some of the qualities that they want in reviewers include: experience, a keen eye, and an ability to write about a 350-word review in two weeks’ time.

To apply, simply send your resume and writing samples! You can find out more about this opportunity here .

2. Reedsy Discovery

💸 Pay: Tip basis

A powerhouse in the world of indie books, Reedsy Discovery gives book reviewers the chance to read the latest self-published books before anyone else. You can browse through hundreds of new stories before picking one that piques your interest. And if you’ve built up a brand as a book reviewer on Reedsy Discovery, you can liaise with authors who contact you directly for a review.

Its application process is pretty simple: just complete this form to be selected as a book reviewer. Once you’re accepted, you can start looking through the shelves and reading immediately. One more thing: book reviewers can get tips for their book reviews. Readers can send $1, $3, or $5 as a token of appreciation (which, let’s be honest, all book reviewers deserve more of).

If this system intrigues you, you can “discover” more about how it works on this page .

3. Any Subject Books

Any Subject Books is a full-suite self-publishing service. More importantly for you, it hires book reviewers on a book-by-book basis to help them review new books.

They’re big on in-depth, honest, and objective reviews. No fluff here! They’re also happy to give you books in your preferred genres, so if you’re a voracious reader of war fiction, you won’t typically be asked to read the latest paranormal romance hit (or vice versa).

Sadly, Any Subject Books is not currently open to book reviewer applications, but check back again — this could change at any time.

4. BookBrowse

BookBrowse reviews both adult fiction and nonfiction, and some books for young adults. The site focuses on books that are not only enjoyable to read, with great characters and storylines, but that also leave the reader knowing something about the world they did not before. Reviewers also write a "beyond the book" article for each book they review.

5. Online Book Club

💸 Pay: $5 to $60

Online Book Club’s FAQ begins with a warning for all aspiring book reviewers: “First of all, this is not some crazy online get-rich-quick scheme. You won't get rich and you won't be able to leave your day job.”

That daunting reminder aside, Online Book Club’s setup is pretty reasonable, not to mention straightforward. You’ll get a free copy of the book and you’ll get paid for your review of that book. Moreover, it’s one of the few sites that’s transparent about their payment rates (anywhere between $5 to $60). To begin the sign-up process, simply submit your email here .

6. U.S. Review of Books

U.S. Review of Books is a nation-wide organization that reviews books of all kinds and publishes those reviews in a popular monthly newsletter. The way that it works for a book reviewer is simple: when a book title is posted, reviewers can request to read it and get assigned.

A typical review for U.S. Review of Books is anywhere between 250 and 300 words. They are looking particularly for informed opinions and professionalism in reviews, along with succinctness. To apply, submit a resume, sample work, and two professional references via email. But we’d recommend that you check out some previous examples of their book reviews here to first get a better sense of what they’re looking for.

7. Women’s Review of Books

💸 Pay: $100 per review

Women’s Review of Books is a long-running, highly-respected print publication that’s a part of Wellesley Centers for Women. This feminist magazine has been published for 36 years and is looking for more book reviewers to join their force.

If you plan on writing reviews for Women’s Review of Books , you should be aware that its reviews are published “in the service of action and consciousness.” Most of its writers are also academics, journalists, or book reviewers with some years of experience behind them. If you meet these qualifications and are accepted, you’ll be compensated $100 per review.

To pitch then a review, send them an email with a quick proposal. For more details, click here .

8. eBookFairs

eBookFairs primarily helps authors grow their author platforms, but it also has a Paid Book Reader program where readers can earn money by, you guessed it, reviewing the books listed on their site.

Note that they do have clear instructions on what qualifies as a review, so do read their guidelines carefully before applying to make sure you can meet them. For instance, the review must be at least 250 words, you must allow at least 3 days between reviews submitted, and it must provide helpful feedback for the author. There are also a limited number of paid reader positions available.

💸 Pay: Variable

If you’re a freelancer, you’re probably already familiar with Upwork! One of the biggest marketplaces for freelancers, Upwork has fingers in every industry’s pie. So it won’t be a surprise to learn that people who are looking for freelance book reviewers regularly post listings on its marketplace.

Because each job caters to an individual client, the requirements and qualifications will differ. It might be a one-time project, or the gig might turn into a long-running collaboration with the client. Generally, the listing will specify the book’s genre, so you’ll know what you’re getting before you agree to collaborate with the client on the other end.

To begin, you’ll need to sign up as a freelancer on Upwork. Find out more information on Upwork’s FAQ page!

10. Moody Press

💸 Pay: Free ARCs

Moody Press is a nonprofit publishing house of Christian titles and Bible study resources. If this is your niche, you’ll definitely be interested in Moody Press’ Blogger Review Program! As part of the program, you’ll get free copies of book published by Moody Press.

Like some of the other programs on this list, you won’t get paid for your review, but you will get a free book. Moody Press also asks you to write your honest review within 60 days of reading it. To get a feel for it, try joining the MP Newsroom Bloggers Facebook group , where you can directly interact with existing members of the program.

11. New Pages

💸 Pay: Variable 

Not interested in writing anything longer than 300 words? Are quick flash book reviews more your pace? If so, becoming a NewPages reviewer might be just your speed. NewPages.com is an Internet portal to small presses, independent publishers and bookstores, and literary magazines. More importantly, they’re looking for short book reviews (generally between 100 and 200 words) on any recent literary magazine or book that you’ve read.

If you’re already a fan of books from small presses or unknown magazines, even better: that’s exactly the kind of reviewer NewPages wants to work with. If you’d like to look through some of their past book reviews to see if your style matches, check out their book review archive here .

12. Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly is an online magazine focused on international book publishing and all that that entails. More pertinently, it regularly reviews both traditionally published and self-published books, which means that it does occasionally have a call for book reviewers. As of right now, it’s closed to applications — but if you check its Jobs page every once in a while, you might see an opening again.

13. Tyndale Blog Network

Tyndale Blog Network runs a program called My Reader Rewards Club, which is based on an innovative rewards system. If you join as a member, you can earn points for certain actions that you take on the site (for instance, inviting a friend to the program and sharing a direct link to MyReaderRewardsClub.com on Facebook each fetches you 10 points).

Writing a review for a Tyndale or NavPress book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble gets you 10 points, with a maximum limit of 50 points in 30 days. In turn, you can use your accumulated points to receive more books off of Tyndale’s shelves. If this sounds like something that may be up your alley, check out their FAQ here.

14. Booklist Publications

💸 Pay: $12.50 to $15 per review

Booklist is the American Library Association’s highly respected review journal for librarians. Luckily for freelance writers, Booklist assigns freelance book reviews that vary from blog posts for The Booklist Reader to published book review in Booklist magazine.

As the site itself suggests, it’s important that you’re familiar with Booklist Publication’s outlets (which include Booklist magazine, the quarterly Book Links , and The Booklist Reader blog) and its writing style. Reviews are generally very short (no longer than 175 words) and professionally written. You can discover more of its guidelines here — and an archive of previous Booklist reviews here .

To apply, contact a relevant Booklist editor and be prepared to submit a few of your past writing samples.

15. Instaread

💸 Pay: $100 per summary

Not interested in writing critical takes on the books that you read? Then Instaread might be for you. Instaread has an open call for book summaries, which recap “the key insights of new and classic nonfiction.”

Each summary should be around 1000 to 1500 words, which makes it a fair bit lengthier than your average flash book review. However, Instaread will compensate you heartily for it: as of 2019, Instaread pays $100 for each summary that you write. You can peruse Instaread’s recommended Style Guide on this page , or download Instaread from your App Store to get a better feel for the app.

16. NetGalley

If you’ve dreamt about becoming an influencer in the book reviewing community, you may want to give NetGalley a look. Put simply, NetGalley is a service that connects book reviewers to publishers and authors. Librarians, bloggers, booksellers, media professionals, and educators can all sign up to NetGalley to read books before they’re published.

How it works is pretty simple. Publishers put digital review copies out on NetGalley for perusal, where NetGalley’s members can request to read, review, and recommend them. It’s a win-win for both publisher and reviewer: the publisher is able to find enthusiastic readers to provide an honest review for their books, and the reviewer gets access to a vast catalog of books.

The cherry on top is that NetGalley membership is 100% free! Simply use this form to sign up. And if you’d like more information, you can dip into their FAQ here .

17. getAbstract

Are you an avid reader of nonfiction books? getAbstract is a site that summarizes 18,000+ nonfiction books into 10-minute bites. Their Career Opportunities page often includes listings for writers. At the time of this post’s writing, getAbstract is looking for science and technology writers who can sum up the latest magazine articles and books. They pay on a freelance basis, so apply through their website to get further details.

18. Writerful Books

💸 Pay: $10 to $50

Writerful Books is an author services company that provides everything from beta reading to (you guessed it) book reviewing. As such, they’re always on the lookout for book reviewers with fresh and compelling voices.  

One of the benefits of this gig is that you can review any book that you want for them (although they prefer contemporary award-winning American, Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, and New Zealand authors). Getting a regularly paid gig with Writerful Books isn’t a guarantee, but if you regularly publish quality reviews for them, they may contact you. 

To apply, you’ll have to be able to provide previous book review samples. Here’s the job listing if you’re curious to learn more about this role.

If you're an avid reader,  sign up to Reedsy Discovery  for access to the freshest new reads — or  apply as a reviewer  to give us  your  hot takes!

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Scam alert: Scammers are changing the way they impersonate financial services businesses in sophisticated bond and term deposit scams

Published 2 May 2024

• ASIC is alerting consumers to new ways scammers are offering fake bond and term deposit scams. Scammers are increasingly impersonating legitimate financial services businesses which often don’t have a website or digital footprint. The scammers are also creating fake reviews.
• Scammers mirror the real business addresses, Australian business numbers (ABNs) and financial services licence numbers in their advertising and communications.
• ASIC encourages consumers to be alert to investment scams that set up bank accounts in the consumer’s name or request funds be transferred to a third-party account that is not in the name of the financial services business or held by the bank providing the service.

ASIC is warning consumers about an increase in the sophistication of fake bond and term deposit scams where scammers are impersonating little-known legitimate financial services businesses, often those without a website or digital footprint.

Scammers are mirroring real businesses’ disclosure documents, addresses, International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs), Australian business numbers (ABNs) and Australian financial services (AFS) license numbers, as well as imitating investment maturity dates, coupons and credit ratings.

Scammers also use online advertisements and social media to promote fake bond and term deposit investment offers in well-known companies. The ads lead consumers to an online enquiry form which scammers use to collect personal information, such as their name, email address, and telephone number.

Consumers targeted by these scams are provided with fake investment materials and disclosure documents. The scammers will sound professional, knowledgeable and be personable, and may not rush consumers to make a decision. Often, the investment return being advertised by scammers will sound reasonable (as opposed to “too good to be true” scams).

The scammer will ask the consumer to return a completed application form and personal identity documents. They will then ask the consumer to transfer funds into a bank account. This can appear in the name of the investment or one that is in the consumer’s name. However, it is actually a bank account associated with the scammer. Often this account will be held by a legitimate bank not offering the bond or term deposit.

What to look out for

It can be very hard to identify fake bond and term deposit investment offers so it's important to be careful when considering making investments.

Common signs of a fake bond and term deposit scam:

• Use of certain words and phrases. Scam offers typically use the phrases “guaranteed”, “secure” and “free” – phrases ASIC warns legitimate financial services businesses against misusing.
• Impersonation of financial services businesses that don’t have a digital footprint. Scammers often use the details of legitimate financial services businesses who do not have a website, social media account or other digital channels . They do this to limit consumers’ ability to conduct internet searches or other research on the company as there is no ‘real’ website or internet presence to compare the scammers website or emails against.
• ‘Issuing’ bonds or term deposits in other large companies . The fake bonds and term deposits offered by scammers are in well-known companies, such as banks and ASX-listed companies. Large companies can issue bonds or term deposits themselves and don’t require other companies to ‘issue’ bonds on their behalf. If a business is claiming to issue Treasury or government bonds, then it is a scam. Check out Moneysmart’s imposter bond investment scams to learn more about fake 'low-risk' investment products, like bonds or fixed term deposits.
• Fake online reviews. Be wary of reviews on content-generating websites that allow companies to pay to create and/or publish their news and reviews. These websites produce general content and may not be focused on investments. Usually the content created presents only positive aspects of the investment and doesn’t make comparisons to other investments.
• Stolen business details including the Australian Business Number (ABN), Australian financial services (AFS) licence number and business address of a legitimate financial services business that is being impersonated.
• Imitated details of legitimate bonds or high-interest deposits such as a real maturity date, coupon, credit rating, and ISIN number of legitimate bonds.
• Claims that bonds can be cancelled and that the funds used for the bond can be returned after the first 90 days from the date of investment. It can also falsely claim that the investment scam is covered by the Australian Government deposit guarantee scheme. Check APRA’s website for information for firm eligibility under the scheme. Scammers may include these details to create a false sense of security.
• Use of Government logos. In some cases, the fake documentation will include the improper use of government logos. Financial services businesses are not allowed to use the Australian coat of arms or any Government logo, such as ASIC, APRA, or AUSTRAC, to promote financial products.
• Fake Australian financial services (AFS) licence . The scammers may quote Australian financial services numbers that do not exist. Make sure to always check the licence details via ASIC Connect’s Professional Registers .
• Requests for the consumer’s banking details and transfer of funds . The scammers may ask consumers to send funds to a bank account in the name of an individual. They may claim the account is in the consumer’s name because it is a ‘client segregated account’. Legitimate financial services businesses are required to hold client money for investments in a trust account, client segregated account or cash management trust held in the name of the licensee.
• Require funds be transferred to a third-party account . The scammers may ask consumers to send funds to a third-party account. Bank account details for receiving consumer money should always be in the name of the relevant financial services business. Confirm bank account details by checking the BSB on the Australian Payments Network or by independently contacting the bank directly using the details on AFCA’s website .
• Requests for account details for ‘interest’ payments . Once the consumer has transferred money for the investment, the scammer may confirm the bank account details where ‘interest’ payments will be made, like legitimate financial services businesses may do. However, be aware! These banking details may be used for reversal repayment scams in the future.
• Unexpected contact. Treat phone calls, emails, social media messages, discussion forums or SMSs from people claiming to be from a financial services business that you haven’t contacted before as suspicious. Be extra careful if you have provided your contact details to a comparison website as you may receive calls from scammers impersonating financial services businesses.

Learn more about how scammers have previously offered fake bond and term deposit products. See ASIC warnings for bond and high-interest deposit scams: imposter bonds scams , QANTAS bonds , Telstra bonds , Treasury Bonds , High Interest Deposits , green bonds , and Moneysmart’s imposter bond scams . Read a case study example of how to avoid an imposter bond scam.

Learn how to buy and sell bonds by visiting ASIC’s Moneysmart bonds and term deposits .

Examples of bond and term deposit scams

Example 1: term deposit scam – a fake investment document for segregated client accounts..

Example 2: Term deposit scam – a fake investment document showing a client segregated account that is in the consumer’s name.

Example 3: Bond deposit scam – a fake investment document showing a corporate bond.

Example 4: Bond deposit scam – a fake investment document showing a Treasury bond.

Protect yourself

Before investing, it's important to slow down and do some checks.

• Don’t give personal information or act on investment advice you have come across on a suspicious looking website or social media post.
• If you have any doubts, stop communicating with them.
• Be wary of fake online reviews, including on social media.
• If there are government logos promoting a financial product, then it is likely a scam.
• Ask yourself if you really know who you are communicating with? Independently verify who you are dealing with.
• Look up ASIC’s Moneysmart investor alert list to help keep informed about investments that could be fraudulent, a scam or unlicensed.
• Check AFCA’s website for contact details of financial services businesses and use these contact details to reach out to the financial services business directly and check the legitimacy of the offer.
• Independently verify claims, such as if the bond is covered by the Australian Government deposit guarantee scheme.
• Check the website of any financial services businesses that you have been told are involved in the investment opportunity to see if they have warned the public on their website about recent scams.
• Do your own research on how to invest in bonds and term deposits and their characteristics by reviewing material on state and federal government websites. Follow the tips on Moneysmart’s check before you invest page.
• Consider discussing the investment with your current financial institution or an independently sourced financial advisor, especially if the proposed investment is large.
• Don’t rush to act. Take the time to ask yourself:
• why does the investment documents have a government agency logo on it, for example, an ASIC or APRA logo
• why have you been contacted
• why isn’t the offer available online and needs to be emailed to you
• why does the entity not have a digital footprint
• why is the destination bank account for transfer of investment funds in your name
• why is the destination bank account held with another bank when the entity you are investing with could offer these banking services
• why are they issuing bonds or term deposits in other very large companies when the companies could do that themselves
• how does the interest rate offered compare to others in the market
• does the financial services business’ contact details match those on AFCA’s website
• have you visited Australian government websites on bonds and term deposits, such as Australian Office of Financial Management for treasury bonds or Queensland Treasury’s QTC bonds, and checked the way you are looking to invest matches how the government states you can invest in these products
• does the Australian financial services licence number exist on ASIC’s register
• have I checked for scam warnings or conducted any other independent searches and enquiries on the offer.
• Act quickly if something feels wrong. If you have shared financial information or transferred money, contact your bank immediately.
• Help others by reporting to Scamwatch .
• Directly contact the company the investment claims to be from using the phone number or email address on their main public website which consumers can find by doing an independent internet search.

Think you have been scammed?

If you think you’ve been scammed, take these steps fast:

• Do not send any more money . Block all contact from the scammer.
• Report it to your financial institution . If you are not happy with your financial institution’s response, you can make a complaint to the  Australian Financial Complaints Authority .
• Contact IDCARE , a free government-funded service, which can help to develop a specific response plan if your identity has been compromised. IDCARE will never contact you out of the blue.
• Be wary of follow-up scams promising to help get your money back.
• Report it to Scamwatch to help stop the scammer.
• Warn your family and friends about the scam.

Go to what to do if you’ve been scammed for more detailed steps.

Further support

If you need to talk to someone, contact:

• Lifeline on 13 11 14 (24 hours) or their crisis support online chat or
• Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36 (24 hours) or their web chat

If you are experiencing problems with debt, contact:

• the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007 (Monday to Friday 9.30am to 4.30pm) or chat online

ASIC is Australia’s corporate, markets and financial services regulator.

Google is getting even worse for independent sites

Air purifier reviews site housefresh wrote in february about how big media companies used product reviews as a cash cow on google search to the detriment of small sites. they say the problem has only gotten worse..

By Mia Sato , platforms and communities reporter with five years of experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people who use their tools.

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An article in HouseFresh, a site dedicated to air quality, hit a nerve in February : it outlined how independent publishers have been gradually bumped out of Google search results, with big media companies taking their place. Months later, the situation has only gotten more dire, according to a follow-up published by HouseFresh.

In February, HouseFresh managing editor Gisele Navarro called out publishers like BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone as some of the culprits that publish content about air purifiers despite a lack of expertise — but Google rewards these sites with high rankings all the same. The result is a search results page filled with SEO-first content , designed to do not much more than rank highly on Google.

In a piece published today , she says HouseFresh has “virtually disappeared” from search results: search traffic has decreased 91 percent in recent months, from around 4,000 visitors a day in October 2023 to 200 a day today.

“We lost rankings we held for months (and sometimes years) for articles that are constantly being updated and improved based on findings from our first-hand and in-depth testing, our long-term experience with the products, and feedback from our readers,” Navarro writes. “Our article [previously ranked at #2] is now buried deep beneath sponsored posts, Quora advice from 2016, best-of lists from big media sites, and no less than 64 Google Shopping product listings. Sixty. Four.”

Google didn’t immediately respond on the record to a request for comment.

The HouseFresh article is a fascinating deep dive into a slice of the internet that is so ubiquitous it’s easy to take for granted: product reviews. Nearly every news site has some of this, even if the products aren’t directly related to the expertise of the outlet. HouseFresh calls out Forbes , for example, which has published a boatload of articles about cats and puppies as a way to try to get readers to buy pet insurance. There is no obvious editorial necessity for Forbes to write articles like “Top 20 Largest Dog Breeds” or “What Fruits Can Dogs Eat?” — until you take a look at the sidebar of these stories, which are filled with dozens of affiliate links for pet insurance that Forbes gets a kickback from every time someone signs up.

This kind of SEO-first affiliate content is being deployed ruthlessly at countless sites. Last year, when CNET was discovered to be using artificial intelligence tools to produce dozens of stories, it was SEO-heavy “evergreen” articles it focused on first. In the cases of Sports Illustrated and USA Today ’s AI content debacles, it also was product reviews that were being churned out using automation tools.

The aggressive targeting of top Google search spots — with or without AI — by big media outlets affects small sites like HouseFresh the most. A significant loss of traffic for independent publishers is often enough to shutter an outlet entirely.

“This drop in Google search traffic has affected our income, our capacity to sustain our team, and our plans for the future,” Navarro writes. But HouseFresh seems to be going down swinging: the outlet promises to “uncover scam products” by reviewing the products that big publishers are recommending in product guides.

“And if Google doesn’t want to rank our reviews, we’ll use their own broken results against them to get our takedowns in front of people before they waste their money on an overpriced, overhyped product.”

The best new browser for Windows

More tesla employees laid off as bloodbath enters its fourth week, better siri is coming: what apple’s research says about its ai plans, bluesky confirms jack dorsey is no longer on its board, tesla plans to charge some model y owners to unlock more range.

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Trump’s Weird “USA Bible” Scam Takes a Dark, Unsettling Turn

Trump's “god bless the usa bible” hawking is more than just grift. it’s also starting to look like a preview of his christian nationalist designs for a second term..

Donald Trump’s announcement that he is now peddling something called the “God Bless the USA Bible” drew outrage from some religious figures, but one group that’s been conspicuously quiet about it lately is evangelical leaders. Why? Perhaps because Trump has begun making subtle promises to them that we absolutely must not ignore. We talked with Katherine Stewart, a journalist who covers the religious right , about all the unsettling new ways Trump is signaling a second term shaped around ideals of Christian nationalism.

TNR’s Greg Sargent takes a critical look at the day’s political news and the stories leading NewRepublic.com, and speaks to leading journalists and newsmakers.

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Biden Cancels $6.1 Billion in Debt for Former Art Institute Students

The announcement covers 317,000 former students and marks another step in the administration’s student loan relief efforts.

By Zach Montague

Reporting from Washington

The Biden administration on Wednesday canceled more than $6 billion in student debt for 317,000 people who attended the Art Institutes , a now-defunct network of for-profit colleges that President Biden said “knowingly misled” students.

After a review of lawsuits brought by state attorneys general against the schools and their parent company, Education Management Corporation, the Education Department found that the Art Institutes falsified job placement figures in advertisements and misled prospective students with inflated salary expectations.

In one case the department highlighted, an Art Institute campus in Florida appeared to have included the tennis star Serena Williams’s annual income in its graduate salary projections after she had attended classes there.

“This institution falsified data, knowingly misled students and cheated borrowers into taking on mountains of debt without leading to promising career prospects at the end of their studies,” President Biden said in a statement.

He also took a swipe at former President Donald J. Trump, whom he accused of ignoring the influence of predatory for-profit schools on students seeking what they believed were meaningful academic credentials.

“While my predecessor looked the other way when colleges defrauded students and borrowers, I promised to take this on directly to provide borrowers with the relief they need and deserve,” Mr. Biden said.

The president’s decision to cancel the student debt was another step in his pursuit of student loan forgiveness in the year since the Supreme Court struck down a far more ambitious plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in debt.

Mr. Biden said last month that he would make another attempt at large-scale debt forgiveness for more than 25 million people, despite opposition from Republicans, who say it would be unfair to borrowers who struggled to pay off their student debt without assistance.

In the meantime, the administration has forgiven about $160 billion in debt for 4.6 million borrowers by fixing and streamlining existing programs that have been plagued by bureaucratic and other problems for years.

The action covers students who attended Art Institute schools between Jan. 1, 2004, and Oct. 16, 2017. The department said borrowers would be notified starting on Wednesday that they had been approved and would see their debt canceled automatically.

Forgiving federal student loans for borrowers who the administration has determined were preyed on by their schools has emerged as one part of the administration’s student debt relief strategy, using its authority under an existing program known as borrower defense to repayment. To date, the administration has approved $28.7 billion in debt forgiveness for some 1.6 million borrowers whose institutions engaged in misleading practices or shut down.

“In addition to providing critical relief to students, we need to hold wrongdoers accountable — otherwise, executives will continue to exploit students for their own benefit,” said Aaron Ament, the president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, which has represented former Art Institute students since 2018.

Zach Montague is based in Washington. He covers breaking news and developments around the district. More about Zach Montague