The problem with most online reviews is that they usually only collect reviews from those who are motivated to submit a review. This usually skews reviews towards the 1 or 5 star ends of the spectrum because 3-star reviewers aren&#x27;t really motivated to go through the hassle of submitting a review, unless they&#x27;re the type of person who obsessively reviews everything (think Yelp! Elite).<p>The only real way to get past this is to know when someone is a candidate to review something and solicit reviews from them. Amazon reviews fall into this category and it&#x27;s the reason why they&#x27;re pretty reliable. I&#x27;d bet they&#x27;re getting 5-10% conversion (I&#x27;ve worked on systems that got over 30%, but different types of reviewable products have different conversion rates) on every &quot;Did product X meet your expectations?&quot; email they send. They&#x27;ve got their die hards that review everything and who&#x27;s reviews everyone finds helpful, but the star rating will be largely determined by the larger group of people that write 1-2 sentences and submit.<p>But without closing the loop and attempting to get reviews from every possible reviewer, ratings are far less useful.