Why did my TrustScore drop

Why did my TrustScore drop when the star average looks the same?

Because the TrustScore is not a plain average. Trustpilot says it is a weighted average built from three factors: time span, frequency, and an average that already holds 7 neutral reviews. All three are set out in TrustScore and star rating explained.

Time span is the part that catches people out. Newer reviews carry more weight than older ones. Trustpilot treats recent reviews as the better sign of how a company is doing now.

So your old 5-star reviews are still on the page. They still count. They just count for less as the months pass.

That is how a score falls in a week when the page looks much the same. Add the stars up by hand and you get one number. Trustpilot's weighted number is a different one, and it is the one on display.

Our guide to how Trustpilot calculates TrustScore walks through the three factors in full.

What do the 7 neutral reviews have to do with a drop?

Trustpilot builds 7 neutral reviews worth 3.5 stars into every calculation. They are there so a brand new profile does not swing to 1.0 or 5.0 on two reviews. Their pull fades as real reviews arrive.

On a small profile they still matter. A profile with 30 reviews moves a long way on one new review, in both directions. A profile with 3,000 reviews hardly twitches.

That is worth knowing before you act. On a small profile, a fall of a few tenths can be one bad week rather than a trend.

What causes a sudden drop?

A burst of 1-star reviews

A shipping delay, a price change or a product swap can bring a run of complaints in days. Recent reviews weigh the most, so the score moves at once. Trustpilot says profiles under 10,000 reviews are recalculated straight away when a review is posted.

If this is your cause, the review text will say so. Read ten of them and the repeat phrase is usually obvious.

Good reviews ageing out of their weight

Nothing has to go wrong for this one. If your last invitation run was a year ago, the reviews holding your score up keep getting older. Trustpilot's frequency factor rewards a steady flow, so a quiet profile drifts toward whatever arrives on its own.

A batch of positive reviews taken offline

Reviews that go offline stop counting toward the score. If Trustpilot's detection software took a group offline together, the number falls with no new review at all. Watch your total review count, not only the score. Our guide on why Trustpilot reviews disappear lists the six causes.

An invitation campaign ending

While invitations run, your recent reviews are a fair sample of your customers. When they stop, the recent mix is whoever cared enough to go and write one. Those people are more often unhappy ones.

Trustpilot requires invitations to be fair and neutral, sent to all customers rather than the happy ones. Our guide to Trustpilot's invitation rules covers what is allowed.

A profile being claimed

Claiming a page does not change the arithmetic. Trustpilot says content is treated the same whether or not a profile is claimed. What changes is traffic. The page gets linked from your site and your emails, more customers find it, and the recent mix shifts.

What can I change, and what can I not?

The most useful line in that table is the last one on the right. Trustpilot lists flagging in bulk over a short period as misuse of the tool, and the penalties land on your own profile. Action We Take sets out the ladder, which ends in a Consumer Warning that hides your TrustScore.

You also cannot ask a customer to take a review down as a favour. Trustpilot counts offering anything for an edit or a removal as misuse, including after you have fixed the problem.

Can removing reviews put the score back?

One lever takes a review off a profile. You flag it for one of Trustpilot's five reasons, and Trustpilot decides. Its team assesses the flag, and the review either stays online or goes offline. That process is described in what happens after businesses flag reviews. Reviews that go offline stop counting toward the score.

Three limits are worth stating plainly.

1. Most 1-star reviews are real complaints about a real order, and those stay online.
2. Recent reviews weigh the most, so a recent rule-breaking review is worth more to you than an old one.
3. The same review cannot be flagged twice for the same reason, so the first report has to be right.

That is the whole lever. It works on a minority of reviews. It works best when the breach is visible in the review's own words, such as a promo code or a staff member's phone number.

This is the work behind our Trustpilot review removal service. We report reviews that break a named rule, through Trustpilot's own tool, in your account, at a slow pace, with proof for each one. Trustpilot makes every decision.

How do I model my own numbers?

Our TrustScore calculator takes three numbers: your score today, your total number of reviews, and the target you want. It returns how many 1-star removals would reach that target under a plain average.

Read the result as a sense of scale, not a forecast. Trustpilot does not publish its weights, so no tool outside the company can produce the real figure. What the calculator does tell you is whether you are looking at a handful of removals or several hundred. That is usually the decision in front of you. To choose a target, our guide to what research says about score and conversion covers the rounding steps Trustpilot uses.

It cannot tell you how many of your reviews break a rule. Only reading them can do that.

What should I do this week?

1. Check whether reviews left the page. Compare your review count with last month. A falling count points at offline reviews rather than new complaints.
2. Count the 1-star reviews from the last 30 days. Recent ones carry the weight, so they are the ones moving your number.
3. Read them for a repeat cause. A run of complaints about one delay or one billing step is a product problem, and it will keep producing reviews.
4. Sort them into two lists. One list breaks a named Trustpilot rule. The other is a fair complaint you cannot report.
5. Start fair invitations again. New reviews from all customers carry the most weight, and this is the only lever with no ceiling on it.
6. Report the qualifying reviews slowly, with evidence. A careful few beat a bulk run every time.

If you want the two lists for your own profile, request a free audit. Our review removal pricing is $475 to $600 per confirmed removal, with nothing paid up front.

Most of the profiles we read belong to telehealth brands, where a drop usually follows a delivery or billing problem rather than a change in the formula.