The User Reviews factor accounts for 40% of every Trust Score - the largest single factor. This article explains how reviews are weighted within it.
Rating, weighted by volume
The factor is built from the average star rating across a site's reviews, weighted by how many reviews there are. A site with hundreds of reviews gives a more reliable signal than one with only a few, so volume strengthens confidence in the rating.
This weighting also reduces the impact of a small cluster of unusual reviews. A handful of ratings cannot outweigh a large, established body of feedback.
Community plus external platforms
The factor combines two sources:
- Community reviews written by Tested.gg members who sign in with Google.
- Verified external ratings aggregated from established platforms such as Trustpilot and Google.
Each source is weighted by how many reviews it carries, so the result reflects the full weight of available feedback rather than any single source.
What trust level does (and does not) change
Higher trust levels - Regular and Trusted - let your reviews publish without waiting for manual moderation, and Trusted reviewers earn a badge on their profile. Trust level changes how your review is handled, not how much a single review moves a site's score. The factor is driven by overall ratings and volume, not by who posted any one review.
Sites with few reviews
When a site has very few community reviews, the factor leans on verified external ratings, and a site with no reviews at all keeps a neutral review factor rather than being pushed up or down. As more reviews arrive, the factor reflects them in the next daily recalculation.
Want your reviews to publish faster? Build a track record of approved, detailed reviews to reach Regular and Trusted trust levels. See How Trust Scores are calculated for the full factor breakdown.