Why we publish the scoring formula
30 July 2026 · 4 min read
A score you cannot check is a score you have to take on faith. Here is ours, in full.
Most review platforms treat their rating formula as a trade secret. We think that gets the incentives backwards: if you cannot see how a score is produced, you cannot tell whether it is measuring quality or measuring who paid.
The formula
Each published review is weighted by age, halving every 365 days. Those weights are summed, a prior of 3.5 stars with the weight of eight reviews is added, and the result is scaled to 0–10.
Two consequences follow, and both are intentional. A company cannot coast on how it behaved three years ago. And a company with three glowing reviews cannot outrank one with four thousand good ones.
What it costs us
Publishing the formula means people can argue with it. That is the point. A business that understands why its score moved can do something about it; one that does not just assumes the platform is arbitrary.