Trustpilot

Trustpilot.com is a Danish consumer review website founded in Denmark in 2007 which hosts reviews of businesses worldwide. Nearly 1 million new reviews are posted each month.[1] The site offers freemium services to businesses.[2] The firm relies on users, software and compliance team to report and remove reviews from the platform that violate Trustpilot's content guidelines. Trustpilot has offices in New York, Denver, London, Copenhagen, Vilnius, Berlin and Melbourne, and employs more than 700 people.

Trustpilot, Inc.
Type of site
Privately held
Founded2007 (2007)
Headquarters
Copenhagen, Denmark
Area servedNorth America, Europe
Founder(s)Peter Holten Mühlmann
Key peoplePeter Mühlmann (CEO)
Hanno Damm (CFO)
Employees820 (2019)
URLwww.trustpilot.com

History

Trustpilot was founded by the company’s current CEO, Peter Holten Mühlmann, in Denmark in 2007.[3] He started the company when his parents started shopping online. At the time, he was studying at Aarhus University, School of Business and Social Sciences and would later leave university to pursue Trustpilot.

After raising $3 million in early venture funding from 2008 to 2010, Trustpilot received an initial capital injection from SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone in November 2011.[4] One year later, Index Ventures, SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone invested $13 million in Series B funding in Trustpilot, which the company used for international growth.[5]

In 2013, Trustpilot opened offices in New York and London. In the same year, the company was named Danish Startup of the Year at Next Web’s European Startup Awards.[6] In 2014, Draper Esprit (formerly known as DFJ Esprit) invested $25 million in Trustpilot, along with support from the existing investors.[7] According to VentureBeat, the Series C funding round would help Trustpilot “bring its online retail reviews service to the U.S.”[8] At the end of 2014, Trustpilot employed 325 people and 400,000 new reviews were posted each month.[9] According to Website Magazine, “Trustpilot soared in 2014,” and experienced “record growth with an 80 percent year-over-year increase in revenue.[10]

In May 2015, Trustpilot received $73.5 million in Series D funding. The investment was led by Vitruvian Partners, with contributions from all existing investors.[11] In March, 2015, Google announced it was launching product ratings in Germany, the UK and France. In order to do this, “Google is aggregating data in Europe from different sources” including third party aggregators like Trustpilot.[12] Trustpilot has a licensing agreement with Google, allowing Trustpilot reviews to be listed as Google Seller Ratings, or “Google Stars.”[13] Trustpilot employs about 700 people and roughly 1,000,000 new reviews are posted each month.[1] Trustpilot has published 50 million reviews about more than 228,000 brands [14]

Products

Anyone can post a review on Trustpilot. User account creation requires an email address or Facebook account. Trustpilot lets businesses collect and respond to reviews for free and offers specialized marketing and analytics features in their paid plans. Trustpilot generates income from subscribing companies who use its software to be reviewed by customers and gain business acumen from reviews.[15][16][17]

Business model

Trustpilot operates a freemium business model and earns most of its revenue from companies that subscribe to its services.[18] According to its annual report, Trustpilot’s revenue has grown an average 39% year on year since 2014.[19]

Criticism

There are independent investigations that suggest that review websites such as Trustpilot may have fake reviews.[20][21][22] There is controversy about the legitimacy of some of Trustpilot's and other consumer review websites' reviews and the way that it deals with complaints about them, although Trustpilot insists that it strives to only include genuine reviews.[20][22][23][24][25] The firm allows businesses to selectively display reviews about them, which may violate certain laws or regulations.[23] Trustpilot featured fake reviews for Bizzyloans. Trustpilot deleted them after they were brought to light by KwikChex, an online investigations company.[26] Fake reviewers often steal the identities of real people to falsely build up reviewed companies' reputations. Trustpilot denies that it permits any known fraudulent reviews on its site.[27]

On 14 September 2017, Trustpilot issued an open letter clarifying its review policy following allegations concerning the 'validity of reviews of [online estate agent] Purplebricks by customers'.[28][29]

On 22 March 2019 The Times reported that estate agents Purplebricks and Foxtons are ‘gaming’ Trustpilot feedback by paying it to help gain better scores.[30][31]

Reporting reviews

Trustpilot reserves the right to remove reviews without any notice according to their policy. It insists that it always makes a bona fide effort to obey the law and its published policies to ensure that only authentic reviews remain on the website.[2]

Companies are allowed to respond publicly to reviews, or report a review if they believe it violates Trustpilot's user guidelines or they have no record of the reviewer as a customer. When a company reports a review, it is automatically replaced with a message indicating that it is being assessed. If the reviewer does not provide the requested information to Trustpilot (e.g. proof of purchase) within seven days, Trustpilot removes the review.[32]

Trustpilot may take "some time"[33] to investigate a reported review, so even if after investigation the review is reinstated, if more reviews have been submitted to the company's satisfaction in the meantime, the reinstated review will be substantially less prominent than when it was first posted.

Proof of purchase is not required to post a new review[34] so there is little incentive for a company to report positive reviews. Given the company will prefer to report negative reviews,[35] this has the potential to skew reviews in favour of the company.[2]

Hiding negative reviews

Facebook plugin

Users of Trustpilot's Facebook plugin (for their Pro subscribers, paying $599 per month[36]) have the option to display only reviews giving a certain score: "Choose the number of reviews that you want to display from the drop-down menu, then select the rating that the displayed reviews will have".[37] This ensures the Facebook end-user does not see any negative reviews in the plug-in. Since the plug-in does not reveal that the reviews displayed are an unrepresentative sample, this feature means Pro subscribers can create a better impression than subscribers to Trustpilot's free products, which do not have this censorship facility.

Trustbox feature

Paying Trustpilot subscribers using the "Trustbox" feature (which allows a website to show embedded Trustpilot reviews) can ensure only reviews with a minimum star rating will be displayed: there is a setting that "Displays the star ratings that you select, for example, all 3-, 4-, and 5-star reviews".[38] There is no equivalent option to set a maximum star rating to display.

While Trustpilot concedes "[by using Trustboxes] you don't show consumers the full, accurate picture of all your customers' opinions",[39] the Trustbox itself does not reveal that the review selection is filtered, hence may mislead some consumers (those who are not familiar with Trustpilot's Trustbox integration documentation) into believing a company only attracts positive reviews.

Trustpilot's own Plans & Pricing page shows the Trustbox in action, displaying reviews of their own platform, configured to display 4- and 5-star reviews only, beneath the slogan "Trustpilot is a universal symbol of trust".[40]

References
  1. Ingham, Edmund. "48 Hours On The Copenhagen Startup Scene: Here's What I Learned". Forbes.com. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  2. "Terms & Conditions". trustpilot.com. Trustpilot. Archived from the original on 2015-10-17. Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  3. "Trustpilot". crunchbase.com. Crunch Base. Archived from the original on 2016-05-09. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  4. "Trustpilot Raises $4.5m To Scale Up Trust Ratings For Shopping". TechCrunch. 2011-11-01. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  5. "With Nearly 7M Reviews Of 100K Sites, Trustpilot Raises $13M From Index And More To Build Out A Yelp For The World Of E-Commerce". TechCrunch. 2012-12-11. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  6. Martin Bryant. "The Winners of The Next Web's European Startup Awards 2013". Thenextweb.com. Archived from the original on 2015-10-31. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  7. Ho, Geoff. "Cash allows Trustpilot to spread wings | City & Business | Finance | Daily Express". Express.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  8. Christina Farr (2014-01-13). "TrustPilot nabs $25M to bring its online retail reviews service to the U.S. | VentureBeat | Business | by Christina Farr". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on 2015-11-19. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  9. "Trustpilot the story so far". Archived from the original on 2015-10-06.
  10. "Need Proof Reviews Matter? Trustpilot Soared in 2014". www.websitemagazine.com. Archived from the original on 2019-01-13. Retrieved 2019-01-13.
  11. "Already a hit in Europe, Trustpilot gets $73.5M to become "the review site for the entire online world"". Pando. 2015-05-28. Archived from the original on 2019-01-13. Retrieved 2019-01-13.
  12. "Google Takes Its Amazon-Style Starred Product Ratings To Europe To Boost Shopping Searches". TechCrunch. 2015-03-26. Archived from the original on 2015-11-09. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  13. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2017-02-19. Retrieved 2017-02-18.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. "2019 Most Innovative Companies". Fast Company. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  15. Kolodny, Lora. "Trustpilot Raises $73.5 Million for Credible Reviews of Businesses Online". wsj.com. Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2015-10-17. Retrieved 2015-10-16.
  16. "How to make Trustpilot work for your business". www.rstboilers.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  17. "Trustpilot raises $55 million for online business reviews". VentureBeat. 2019-03-05. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  18. Nandini Roy Choudhury (2019-03-06). "Consumer Review Platform Trustpilot raises $55 Million in Latest Round of Funding". The Guardian Tribune. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  19. "Enhedsvisning". Data (in Danish). Archived from the original on 2019-05-11. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  20. Smith, Mike Deri. "Fake reviews plague consumer websites". theguardian.com. The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2015-10-06. Retrieved 2015-10-06.
  21. Belton, Padraig. "Navigating the potentially murky world of online reviews". bbc.com. BBC. Archived from the original on 2015-10-06. Retrieved 2015-10-06.
  22. Naylor, David. "Google how can you trust www.trustpilot.co.uk ?". davidnaylor.co.uk. David Naylor. Archived from the original on 2015-10-07. Retrieved 2015-10-06.
  23. Barsby, Adam. "Fake Online Reviews and Endorsements: Competition Regulator to Investigate Unlawful Practices". e-xanthos.co.uk. Xanthos. Archived from the original on 2015-10-06. Retrieved 2015-10-06.
  24. Haines, Lester. "Is iFlorist the greatest website in the universe, ever?". theregister.co.uk. The Register. Archived from the original on 2015-10-07. Retrieved 2015-10-06.
  25. "iFlorist". bitterwallet.com. bitterwallet.com. Archived from the original on 2015-10-06. Retrieved 2015-10-06.
  26. "KwikChex works with BBC to expose Review Fraud". kwikchex.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-26. Retrieved 2016-08-24.
  27. "Fake online customer reviews 'for sale', BBC finds". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2015-06-21. Retrieved 2015-06-22.
  28. "Open Letter in response to questions regarding Purplebricks and Trustpilot" (Press release). London: Trust Pilot. 2017-09-14. Archived from the original on 2017-09-21. Retrieved 2017-09-21.
  29. "Exclusive: Trustpilot review company explains its Purplebricks policy". Estate Agency Today. 2017-09-14. Archived from the original on 2017-09-22. Retrieved 2017-09-21.
  30. "Purplebricks and Foxtons reviews on Trustpilot come under scrutiny". Estate Agent Today. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  31. Correspondent, Tom Calver | Andrew Ellson, Consumer Affairs (2019-03-22). "Estate agents and banks 'gaming' feedback website Trustpilot". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on 2019-03-25. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  32. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-02-24.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  33. https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004535608--What-happens-after-companies-report-reviews-
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  37. https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/201867047-Install-the-Trustpilot-Facebook-Page-Tab-integration
  38. https://web.archive.org/web/20200313095001/https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/203840826-Add-a-TrustBox-widget-to-a-webpage#select-reviews-3
  39. https://web.archive.org/web/20200313095001/https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/203840826-Add-a-TrustBox-widget-to-a-webpage
  40. https://web.archive.org/web/20200917145151/https://business.trustpilot.com/plans
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