What a verified review means (and what it does not)

How a review becomes verified

On RooVello there are two routes. The common one: a business sends a review request to a past customer through our Review Requests tool, the customer follows the personal link, and the review is marked Verified because it is tied to a real transaction the business recorded. The second: a reviewer who posts on their own is asked for proof of purchase, such as a receipt or booking confirmation, and a moderator marks the review Verified when it checks out.

Reviews without either are published as Unverified. They still count toward the overall score, at 60 percent of the weight of a verified review, and they are excluded from the verified-only score.

What verification does not tell you

Verification confirms a transaction. It does not confirm that the business asked every customer, so a verified-only score can still lean positive if a business only requests reviews from people it expects to be happy. That practice, review gating, is prohibited on this platform and by the FTC's review rule, but no platform can prove a negative.

It also does not mean the reviewer is independent. A reviewer whose email is on the business's own domain is treated as an insider and excluded from scores entirely, whether or not the transaction was real.

Open platforms versus closed platforms

Closed platforms, where only invited customers can write, show nearly 100 percent verified reviews by design. That is a real strength for confirming transactions and a real weakness for completeness: a customer the business never invited cannot speak. Open platforms let anyone write, which brings in uninvited experiences at the cost of some noise.

RooVello is open, and shows both scores so you do not have to choose. Read the verified-only score for confidence in who wrote the reviews, and the overall score for the fuller picture.

The labels you will see on every review

Every review carries two labels, stored with it permanently.

• Collection method: Organic (the reviewer came on their own), Invited by the business, or Imported from another platform by the business.
• Verification status: Verified customer, Unverified, or Verification pending (we have asked the reviewer for proof).

Frequently asked

Is an unverified review fake?

No. Most unverified reviews are real people who were never sent a link. Unverified means we could not tie the review to a transaction, so it counts at reduced weight and stays out of the verified-only score. Read it, and weigh it accordingly.

Can a business verify its own reviews?

Only by sending requests to real customers through the request tool, which records the transaction. A business cannot mark an existing review as verified, and reviewers on the business's own email domain are excluded from the score as insiders.

What does "verification pending" mean?

Our automated checks could not confirm the reviewer was a customer and something about the review raised a moderate risk score. The review is published with the tag, we have emailed the reviewer for proof, and the tag goes away when it arrives. If nothing arrives within 14 days the review stays published as Unverified.

Does a verified review count more in the score?

Yes. A verified review has weight 1.0, an unverified review 0.6, an imported review 0.4, and an insider review 0. Weight also halves every 90 days from the service date, so recent verified reviews move the score most.