Ranking Methodologies

PeerSpot is 100% committed to offering an open platform for real users to share opinions with their peers. Any vendor can be listed and ranked as long as it offers an enterprise-class solution with real customers.

Category rankings and leaders:

PeerSpot’s ranking algorithm, represented by a bar graph, is based on a weighted aggregate score. Our rankings are based on 5 ranking metrics:

Average rating
Reviews
Words/Review
Views
Comparisons

The ranking score is calculated as follows:

The product with the highest count in each area gets the highest available score. (18 points for Reviews, Words/Review, Views and Comparisons.) Every other product gets assigned points based on its total in proportion to the #1 product in that area.

For example, if a product has 80% of the number of reviews compared to the product with the most reviews then the product’s points for reviews would be 18 (weighting factor) * 80% = 14.4.

For Average Rating, the maximum score is 28 points awarded linearly between 6-10 (e.g. 6 or below=0 points; 7.5=10.5 points; 9.0=21 points; 10=28 points).
If a product has fewer than ten reviews, the point contribution for Average Rating and Words/Review is reduced: 1/3 reduction in points for products with 5-9 reviews, two-thirds reduction for products with fewer than five reviews.
Reviews that are more than 24 months old, as well as those written by resellers, are completely excluded from the ranking algorithm.

All products with a minimum of forty points are designated that month with a Leader badge. There can be multiple, one, or zero leaders in a category.

Category rankings are recalculated at the beginning of each month based on the new reviews which have been published and the old reviews which have ‘expired’ (published > 24 months ago).

If we suspect a vendor has used artificial means intended to increase the ranking data, our team will thoroughly investigate the suspect foul play and take corrective action as needed (ex: use of a click farm by a vendor in order to increase views or comparisons of their product).

Vendors cannot delete reviews but if they see a post that they feel is inconsistent with our Community Guidelines or Terms of Use and should be removed, they can explain why they feel the review should be removed and our verification team will look into the issue and take appropriate action if needed.

Category leaders:

In each category, every product that has at least 40 points is :

Rankings by company size:

When viewing the rankings filtered based on company size, the company sizes are:

Small businesses (1-100 employees)
Medium (100-1K employees)
Large enterprises (1K+ employees)

Views and comparisons are based on the company size of people reading reviews. Reviews, rankings, and words/review are based on the company size of reviewers.

All published reviews which influence rankings:

Must come from real users that have used the product/service, or have evaluated it for the purpose of using it for their company, in the past 12 months. Reviewers must disclose if they’ve received a financial incentive for writing their review. Posts that are suspected to be bogus in any way will not be approved.
Must include a balanced perspective. Everything’s got its plusses and minuses. We require that each review includes a balanced perspective. Posts that lack a balance of content (offering pros & cons) will not be approved.
Includes the relationship of the reviewer with the vendor (customer, partner, reseller, etc.) Each reviewer is asked to self-identify the relationship they have with the vendor which we verify before publishing their review. We accomplish this additional verification using LinkedIn and publicly available information about the reviewer and their company. We follow up with the reviewer by phone and email if necessary.
Have been verified and approved before it’s published on our site and included in ranking data. We take investigating suspect or inappropriate submissions extremely seriously as we believe it’s important the community can trust the data in order to make important decisions for their company.

How do we validate our reviews?

We require new users to register either with their LinkedIn profile or their company email address. This requirement enables us to prevent vendors or other non-users from posting fake reviews. This verification process allows us to put measures in place to identify suspicious users and/or fraudulent posts. The validation process combined with active community moderation and our commitment to review every post, allows us to have confidence in our information.

We take pride in being an objective site offering authentic reviews from real users. We ensure our reviews are authentic with a number of steps to ensure authenticity:

User Validation: We validate the registration information against our own database which includes cross checking with LinkedIn profiles, to properly categorize whether the person is a real user or works for a vendor, reseller, consultant, integrator, or media. If we cannot clearly determine from someone’s LinkedIn profile that he/she is a real user, then the person’s profile is flagged for additional follow-up, including direct contact.
Community Policing: We enable the community to self-police itself and to flag reviews that seem suspicious. At the bottom of every review is an “Inappropriate?” link that enables the community member to flag a potentially suspect review.
Erring on the Side of Quality: If we cannot clearly determine that the review is from a real user, then we err to the side of quality and the review is not published. We’d rather have one fewer review in our system and sleep well at night knowing that all of the reviews published on PeerSpot are authentic and relevant for our user community.
Combating Fraud: In the event that a vendor attempts to circumvent or abuse the system, we will put a red badge on the vendor’s page saying that the vendor has been suspected of planting false reviews. We believe the risk of this happening outweighs the potential gain from a fake review.

Order of reviews on product pages:

By default, reviews only appear on product pages if they were published within the last 24 months. Reviews are not deleted after 24 months, but they no longer count towards the category rankings and no longer appear on the product page.

The default ordering of reviews on a product page is based on the review length, then review date. Visitors can change the ordering of reviews to be based on date, highest ranking, and lowest ranking.

Top comparisons and alternative products:

Data displayed regarding the top comparisons for each product and category are based on live data of products being compared by enterprise tech buyers. In order for a comparison to be displayed, it must hit a minimum threshold to ensure accuracy.

Have questions about our ranking methodologies? Reach out to methodology@peerspot.com