ONE AllRatings weights each customer’s review score by recency to give you the most accurate total Star Score ratings. If you needed to predict how a company will perform this month for your family, would you rather see ratings from the last two years or from back in 2012? As time passes people change. They enter a new stage of life and react to external forces.Companies do, too. That’s why recent company star ratings are more predictive of the actual company performance you can expect.

If you needed to predict how a company will perform this month for your family, would you rather see ratings from the last two years or from back in 2012? As time passes people change. They enter a new stage of life and react to external forces. Companies do, too. That’s why recent company star ratings are more predictive of the actual company performance you can expect.

Companies Change—Recency Weighting is Critical

Companies can change for the better or worse. An expert manager joins a company improving quality and customer satisfaction. An owner of a highly rated company sells and the new owner cuts corners on customers, leading to dissatisfaction. A company expands its offerings but fails to develop the service practices necessary to do good work. There’s an eternal truth to the old line “what have you done for me lately?”

Old Rating Scores Are Less Predictive

You can’t go back in time and use a company. It’s changed in some ways. You have to choose a company based on how good they are now. We weight each customer review separately by year within ONE AllRatings super-composite Star Scores. For example, ratings of a company’s work performed in the past year are weighted three times more than work performed seven years ago. This is the smartest way to calculate rating star scores.