The FTC found it inflated stars with pre-delivery feedback from its own paying clients.
What it's really for A business-review site that also sells those businesses review-collection tools.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its star ratings and reviews of online businesses, not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
The businesses being rated pay Sitejabber the most (via review-collection subscriptions), and the FTC found that paying clients used Sitejabber's tools to artificially inflate their own average ratings and review counts, with some businesses further alleging their positive reviews were stripped after they stopped paying.
Source →- Operating since
- 2007 (19 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- It sells subscription review-collection and reputation-management software (now branded SmartCustomer) to the same businesses whose reviews and star ratings it publishes.
- What they do
- Sitejabber is a consumer review site that publishes star ratings and reviews of online businesses, while selling those businesses tools to solicit and display reviews.
- What to watch for
- The displayed star ratings are not neutral signals of product quality: the FTC found Sitejabber inflated them with "shopping experience" feedback collected before customers ever received the product, and the high-rated businesses are frequently Sitejabber's own paying clients soliciting reviews through its tools.
- Composite score
- 1.60 / 5.00 → grade D
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- The FTC found Sitejabber 'deceived consumers by misrepresenting that ratings and reviews it published came from customers who experienced the reviewed product or service'; it 'collected ratings and reviews from consumers for its online business clients at the time of purchase, before they received or had the chance to experience the products or services' and used them 'to deceptively inflate the average ratings and review counts of its clients,' which were also shown in Google search results. The Commission voted 5-0 to approve the final consent order in January 2025. Source: FTC press release, final order against Sitejabber (Jan 2025) →
- Sitejabber's business pricing offers tiered subscriptions (Liftoff, Accelerate, Ascend, Custom) sold to businesses, scaling by monthly review-request volume (500 / 1,000 / 2,000 / unlimited) and adding review aggregation, publishing, analytics, and competitive intelligence. The paying customers are the businesses whose reviews are collected and displayed. Source: Sitejabber/SmartCustomer business pricing page →
- Sitejabber was founded in 2007 in San Francisco by Jeremy Gin, Rodney Gin, and Michael Lai; it is privately held and independent, running both a consumer review site and a B2B review-marketing platform. The page also records the 2024 FTC action alleging it 'misrepresented initial shopping experience feedback as reviews of actual products or services.' (Note: Sitejabber's own 'story' page states 2006, a minor discrepancy.) Source: Wikipedia: Sitejabber →