Reviews.io Reputation Management

REVIEWS.io's own Fake Review Policy states that a widget displaying an average star rating "will use an average of all approved reviews, not a subset" — a plain arithmetic mean, not a weighted or Bayesian score like some competing platforms use. There's no documented recency decay or phantom-review dilution: every approved review counts equally, for as long as it stays approved.

A review counts toward a business's rating and review total from the moment it's submitted. The one timing wrinkle: 4- and 5-star reviews publish immediately, while 1-, 2-, and 3-star reviews can take up to 14 days to appear publicly as REVIEWS.io runs its automated fraud-detection checks. That's a publication delay, not a scoring adjustment — but it does mean a fresh negative review may not be visible yet even though it already exists in the system.

Because REVIEWS.io is invite-driven rather than open like a directory, the rating is really a function of who gets invited and when. A business that invites every transacting customer, consistently, on a steady cadence will see a rating that reflects its actual customer base. A business that invites sporadically — or (against policy) selectively — will see a rating that reflects whatever incomplete slice of customers happened to be asked.