6 things that might surprise you about Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a product of the land of lavishly topped open sandwiches, “hygge” (basically "coziness") and minimalist design.

Originally founded in western Denmark as a tech start up in 2007, Trustpilot soon moved its activities to Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen. Despite now being a global platform, Copenhagen remains our headquarters in 2024. 

Scandinavian roots seem fitting for Trustpilot, given that Denmark is considered a “world champion in trust” — or social trust at least, and also ranks #1 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2022. 

In a nutshell, if you have a business that has a web domain (and you’re not doing anything illegal or harmful), you can be reviewed on Trustpilot.

That’s because we let consumers decide which businesses are reviewed — it's not up to us to select them, we simply host the review content and organize it to be displayed on the right page and in line with relevant laws. 

A business profile page is automatically created when a consumer searches for the business's web address on our platform, or it can be added from the search results page. Consumers can then start posting reviews about their recent experience with the business and all of the reviews will be collected in one spot. 

Also on the theme of Trustpilot being consumer driven, it’s important to know that what we call the “TrustScore”, which is a score for each business, is a consumer score. It’s calculated solely on the basis of the 1- to 5-star ratings that consumers provide alongside their reviews, and weighted to reflect that newer reviews tend to be more relevant than older ones. 

So what you see is what consumers think about the business, not what we think.

In line with our commitment to transparency, we also publish information on each “Company activity” page that provides useful insight into how each business uses (or doesn’t use) Trustpilot. And if the business is involved in illegal activities we will remove it and the reviews in line with our Action We Take policy. 

We pride ourselves on being an independent service that sits between consumers and businesses and serves them both. Our freemium model means that consumers and businesses can use Trustpilot for free, while we generate revenue from businesses who choose to subscribe to our extra software services such as insights into their review data and marketing assets.

But everyone has to play by the rules: subscribing businesses still have to comply with our guidelines like everyone else, and their reviews are handled differently in accordance with the same rules that apply to businesses who use our free services. 

Also, across the platform each and every business using Trustpilot benefits from our significant investment into technology to prevent fake reviews and the same technologies are applied to every single Trustpilot business profile. 

Contrary to the common perception that people write reviews because they love to complain and criticize, in our experience the vast majority of people who write reviews do so because they want to help people. Whether that’s helping other consumers have a good experience, rewarding businesses for delivering outstanding service, or sharing what went wrong so that businesses can learn and understand what they can do better. 

As shown in our 2022 Transparency Report, 72.51% of the reviews submitted to Trustpilot are 5-star, and only 13.56% are 1-star. 

Did you know that you can search reviews if you want to dive deeper into the consumer feedback for each reviewed business? There are multiple options to filter or search within reviews. 

On each company profile page, where reviews are collated, readers of reviews can click on the “Filter” button. This opens a window allowing readers to choose one or a combination of filters to apply — star rating, reviews that are verified or replied to, timeframe for when reviews were posted, search by popular or bespoke keywords, and filter by language.

For example, with a few clicks, readers of reviews can search for 1- and 2-star reviews about delivery, from verified reviewers over the last three months. Or what 5-star reviewers have to say within the last 30 days about the customer service.

Find more detailed information about how Trustpilot works in our Help Center.