Trustpilot: Can reviews site really be trusted?
Trustpilot’s CEO has insisted his reviews site “isn’t perfect” but wants to be “the universal symbol of trust”.
Speaking on the latest episode of Morning Wire‘s Boardroom Uncovered show, Adrian Blair defended the FTSE 250 business when asked whether Trustpilot could actually be trusted itself.
Since being founded in 2007 by Peter Holten Mühlmann, the company has set about becoming a household name and, for many, a go-to destination to find out more about what others think of particular companies and experiences.
But challenges remain for the London-listed business, including concerns over whether Trustpilot disproportionately removes genuine negative or critical reviews and that positive reviews often go unchallenged.
Critics also point to the company’s use of AI to determine the legitimacy of reviews and the perception that businesses that subscribe to Trustpilot’s premium services appear to enjoy more influence over their page’s moderation.
Trustpilot is ‘better than social media for reviews’ – CEO
But when asked about whether Trustpilot could actually be trusted itself, Blair said: ” More and more people are using us every month because they see us as a trusted source. A lot of people are saying just that in their Trustpilot reviews.
“And why is that? Because we go to enormous lengths to ensure that the content on Trustpilot is trustworthy.
“We have more than 350m reviews on our platform. Every one of those reviews has metadata attached to it.
“Things like what time of day was it written on, what operating system, what country. Many, many other things.
“Because we have so many reviews, we can look for suspicious patterns in that data.
“So even if people are writing text using AI, there’s so much other stuff that we can look at to decide, is a review trustworthy or not?
“We have about 200,000 new ones coming to Trustpilot every day, and we have to decide in the moment which ones are genuine and which ones are we going to allow onto the platform.
“We use technology to detect what shouldn’t be on the platform. We also have a flagging system. So if you don’t think something suspicious you can flag it will investigate it.
“And we go after bad actors. We work with regulators to do everything in our power to make the content trustworthy.
“The thing to compare it to is social media, because all of those things I’ve just described largely do not exist on social media.
“So people are talking about businesses on all the social media platforms. Do you have the same guidelines and controls, and enforcement? You generally don’t.
“So we have a very important role to play and that’s our vision – to be the universal symbol of trust.”
How are fake reviews taken down?
When asked how long it would take for a fake review to be taken down on Trustpilot, Blair said: “We have a two-hour window right after you post to review, during which we use our systems to check it. And if we don’t think it’s legit, then it won’t go into the platform at all.
“So no one would ever see that review. Now, we’ll never be perfect with all the volume that’s coming in. We don’t claim to be perfect.
“That’s why we have a flagging system afterwards, where people can flag something that’s suspicious.
“We’ve got technology, we’ve got people that will then go and investigate. So that’s kind of the system in how it works.”
Boss hits back at pay-to-play concerns
Another concern that critics of Trustpilot have long levelled against the company is the perception that companies only showcase their positive reviews on their website, with negative reviews hidden from view.
In response, Blair said: “Companies shouldn’t, and our widgets don’t allow them to, showcase reviews that are well below their actual score. You shouldn’t mislead people.
“That’s something the regulators are very clear on – that people shouldn’t have misleading presentations of reviews.
“Of course, with our genuine widgets, with the things that we provide to companies, you can easily click through and see their actual Trustpilot profile and read all their feedback on Trustpilot.
“You don’t have to just look at the ones that they’ve put up. You can click through.
“You can use our site to search just for the one star ones. If you want to see what the unhappy people are saying, you can check all that out. The principle is, we want to be as transparent as possible.”