Trust and transparency
Your reputation, measured. Here is exactly how.
Draft
How the score works
The Vouchmeter score is a weighted average of every published review, with a starting point built in. Before a business has any reviews, we treat it as if it already had 7 reviews at 3.5. Real reviews then pull the score towards what customers actually say.
This stops one or two reviews from making a brand-new listing look perfect or terrible. The more reviews a business collects, the less the starting point matters.
The formula
score = (7 × 3.5 + sum of weighted ratings) ÷ (7 + sum of weights)
- Weight 1 for reviews from the last 12 months.
- Weight 0.5 for older reviews, so the score reflects how a business is doing now.
- Only published reviews count. Held and removed reviews do not.
- Shown to one decimal place. No reviews yet means Not yet rated.
Worked examples
These are calculated live with the same code that scores every business on Vouchmeter.
One review, 5 stars
3.7AverageA single glowing review barely moves a new listing off the starting point.
Ten reviews, all 5 stars
4.4GreatConsistent praise from several people lifts the score clearly.
Ten reviews, all 5 stars, over a year old
4.1GreatOlder reviews count half as much, so a stale record carries less weight.
Forty recent reviews, mixed
4.0Great20 at 5, 10 at 4, 5 at 3, 3 at 2 and 2 at 1. Volume lets the real average show through.
What the colours mean
Scores and stars take the colour of their band. A score of 4.2 is Great, so the whole meter is Great green. The meter fills to the nearest half star, so 4.2 fills four stars and 4.3 fills four and a half.
| Band | Score | Looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 5.0 | |
| Great | 4.0 – 4.9 | |
| Average | 3.0 – 3.9 | |
| Poor | 2.0 – 2.9 | |
| Bad | 1.0 – 1.9 |
Excellent is deliberately hard to reach. Because of the starting point, a business needs around two hundred recent five-star reviews, with almost nothing lower, to round up to 5.0.
Nobody can pay to change a score
No paid boosts
Same rules for all
Businesses cannot delete
Moderation
Most reviews go live straight away. A few are held for a quick check by our team first. We hold a review automatically when it:
- Contains a link
- Contains an email address
- Contains a phone number
- Shorter than 20 characters
- Written in capital letters
Anyone can report a published review. Reported reviews stay visible while we look at them, so a business cannot hide criticism just by reporting it. These are the reasons someone can give:
- Fake or paid-for review
- Harmful or offensive content
- Contains personal information
- Not based on a genuine experience
- Written by someone with a conflict of interest
- Something else
We remove a review only when it breaks our review guidelines. Every moderation decision is logged with the reason, and authors can see why a review was removed in their account.
What Invited means
The business sent this person a one-time review link after a real purchase or booking, and the review was written using that link. It confirms the person was a customer. It does not mean the business saw, approved or edited the review: invited reviews follow the same rules, count the same in the score, and can be just as critical.