How reviews work
Who can write a review on BBR, how a rating is worked out, which reviews come first, and what happens when a review is reported. No business can pay to change any of it.
Last updated
On this page
Reviews only help when you can trust them. Here is exactly how they work on BBR: the rules every review follows, and the rules we follow ourselves.
Who can write a review
Anyone can read reviews, without an account. To write one, you need a BBR account with a verified e-mail address.
- You review a business you used yourself, and tell us the month of your visit, within the last 24 months.
- A review has a star rating from 1 to 5, a title and at least 50 characters of text, and up to 6 photos.
- Before you send it, you confirm that you have no connection to the business and weren’t offered anything for your review.
- The business’s owner can’t review it, and neither can anyone whose claim to own it is waiting for a decision.
- Every member has daily limits on how many reviews and photos they post, so that no single account can flood a business with reviews. Most people never reach them.
Reviews appear as soon as they are sent. Our team doesn’t approve them first, and doesn’t change what they say.
One review per business
- Each member can review a business once. If things change, after a second visit or once the business has fixed a problem, edit your review instead of writing a new one. An edited review says so.
- You can delete your own review at any time.
- A review our team removed can’t be edited or deleted, and you can’t write another review of that business.
- When you edit a review, our team can still see the earlier version, so that an edit can’t hide what a review once said. Nobody else sees it.
How the rating is worked out
A business’s rating is the plain average of the stars in its reviews, rounded to one decimal place, shown with the number of reviews behind it.
- Every review counts the same, whether it is new or old, long or short. Helpful votes and upvotes don’t change the rating.
- Reviews our team removed don’t count. A review that is being checked after reports keeps counting until we decide.
- Upvotes aren’t ratings: they show how many members would recommend a business, and never change its stars.
Top rated: a business with two five-star reviews shouldn’t jump ahead of one with two hundred good ones, so the “Top rated” order uses a number of its own: each business starts as if it already had five reviews of 3.5 stars, and its own reviews move it from there. We use that number only to put businesses in order. The rating you see is always the plain average.
Which reviews come first
A business page shows its reviews in the order “Most relevant” unless you choose another. Most relevant puts the reviews that help readers most near the top:
- newer reviews, since a business can change: the head start of a new review fades over the months;
- reviews other members marked as helpful. Votes from the business’s owner, or from anyone claiming it, don’t count, and the boost has a cap, so a pile of votes can’t keep a review on top;
- detailed reviews, and reviews with photos;
- reviews by members with a track record: an account at least 14 days old, at least 2 published reviews and nothing removed.
Most relevant never looks at the star rating or at whether the owner replied, so it can’t lift good reviews or bury bad ones. You can also sort by newest, highest rated, lowest rated or most helpful, and show only the reviews with a given number of stars.
Reported, flagged and removed reviews
- Any member can report a review that breaks our community guidelines, once per review. Every report reaches our team, and the person who wrote the review is never told who reported it.
- Once 3 members have reported a review, it is flagged and our team checks it first. Reports from the business’s owner, or from anyone claiming it, don’t count towards this.
- A flagged review stays on the page and keeps counting towards the rating until we decide, so a wave of reports can’t silence a fair review.
- Our team either keeps the review as it is, or removes it when it breaks our guidelines or the law: spam, fake or misleading reviews, conflicts of interest, personal information, offensive or illegal content.
- A removed review disappears from the business page and no longer counts. Its author is told why, and can still see it, read-only, in their account.
- When a review is removed for personal information, or for offensive or illegal content, its photos and earlier versions are deleted too.
- When we suspend an account for breaking our rules, its reviews are removed.
What “Owner verified” means
The Owner verified badge means our team checked that the person who manages the listing really runs the business. We check every claim by hand, through the business’s own channels: a call to a phone number the business itself publishes, an e-mail to an address at the business’s own website, or a document such as a trade licence. We never rely only on contact details the claimant gives us.
- The badge isn’t a recommendation, and it changes neither the rating nor the order of reviews.
- Verified owners can keep the listing up to date and reply to reviews. They can’t remove, hide or reorder reviews, and paying us changes nothing.
- The badge goes when the ownership ends. If you run a business and think the wrong person manages its listing, report the listing and tell us why.
How to claim your own business: Claiming your listing.
Owner replies
The owner of a business can post one public reply under each review, shown as a response from the business, and edit it later. The reviewer hears about the reply. Replies never change the rating or the order of reviews.
Replies follow the same guidelines as reviews. Our team removes a reply that threatens the reviewer, reveals their personal details or offers anything to change a review: the rules for owner replies.
What BBR never does
- We never remove a review because it is negative, or because a business disagrees with it.
- We never take money to remove, hide, reorder or change reviews, or to change a rating.
- We never let a business choose who may review it, and we don’t allow businesses to invite only happy customers.
- We never edit what a reviewer wrote. A review that breaks our rules is removed, not rewritten.
- We never tell a business who reported its reviews, or who upvoted it.
- Featured listings are always labelled, and featuring changes no rating, no review and no order of reviews.
Report a review, or ask us to look again
- To report a review, sign in and choose Report under it. Pick the reason that fits, and add anything our team should know.
- If we removed your review or post and you think we got it wrong, write to us from the e-mail address on your account, with the link to the business and why. Someone on our team looks at it again and replies, usually within a week. If we got it wrong, we put it back.
- If a review is unlawful, for example because it makes false statements of fact about you, send us a legal notice: Legal requests and takedowns.