CRO Elliot Clayton follows Tony, Thora and Steve in jotting down his thoughts on what the Gold Standard Manifesto means to him - and the commercial impact it has for our customers.
I've been thinking about what the Gold Standard means from where I sit – and it comes back to a simple question. What are you willing to give up?
Feefo has spent 15 years making decisions that weren't the obvious choice. A model where every review links to a verified purchase. Requests that go to every customer, not a curated sample. Businesses we believe to be fraudulent don't get on the platform. Each of those positions costs something. And each of them is right.
The reviews market has, for a long time, rewarded volume over provenance. More reviews, faster – by whatever means. We went the other way. Trust isn't declared, it's demonstrated. The only way to do that consistently is to build the right infrastructure and hold the line on it, year after year.
What's changed is that consumers are now paying close attention to exactly this. Our own research shows 63% are actively concerned about fake reviews. More interesting is who those consumers are. Older audiences – those who buy more carefully and spend more – are among the least likely to take what they read at face value. These are people who research more before deciding, who notice when something feels off, who have learned scepticism the hard way. A polished star rating is less likely to move them than certified evidence.
And evidence, in this context, means being able to say with certainty: this person made a purchase, and this is what they actually thought.
That changes what a review does. A three-star response from a verified buyer who explains precisely what fell short gives the next customer something worth reading. It gives the business something worth acting on. The unvarnished truth – which only comes when you ask everyone and publish what they say – is more useful than a polished reputation.
There's something else worth noting. I've seen the conversation shifting in the past year around AI search and how review data feeds into it. LLMs, when asked directly, will identify verified reviews as a more trustworthy signal than open platforms. The regulatory direction – the DMCC Act and equivalent legislation elsewhere – is heading the same way. What Feefo has built from the start is increasingly what everyone else is being asked to retrofit.
That's not an accident. It's what 15 years of choosing the harder path produces.
The businesses I speak to that truly understand this aren't just thinking about their star rating. They're thinking about the quality of the signal – what their reviews actually say, how consistently they reflect real experience, and what that tells the next customer. That consistency is what converts. And it's what keeps customers coming back.