Review Retention and Sticking

The retention gap

Earned reviews have near-perfect retention: a genuine review from a real customer stays on a profile for years, accumulating value. Purchased reviews have a retention curve that looks like a melting ice cube — a percentage survive each filter update, and the curve steepens after every major detection pass.

Ask any vendor for two numbers: what percentage of reviews they placed two years ago are still live, and what happened to their clients' star ratings after the last three filter updates. Legitimate services answer instantly; brokers change the subject.

How to audit retention

Pick three competitor profiles in your market. Count their reviews by month for the last two years. Profiles fed by real customers show lumpy growth with seasonal patterns matching their trade. Profiles fed by vendors show flat lines punctuated by sudden cliffs — the removal waves.

Cliffs tell you more than slopes. A profile that loses forty reviews in a week was not unlucky; it was audited.

Why removal waves cluster

Detection does not run continuously in public view. Google and the marketplaces batch removals after classifier updates, which is why whole segments of a market lose reviews in the same month. If your vendor's other clients got hit and you did not, you were lucky, not safe.

Keep reading

• the term decoded
• delivery timelines
• industry field notes

For the primary sources behind this page, see FTC on fake reviews and deceptive endorsements and Word of mouth and Online reputation overview.