Trust & review integrity

Every review carries a verification tier. It tells you how much we know about the relationship behind the review — and the tier changes how much the review counts.

• Unconfirmed. A signed-in account left it. The coach hasn't confirmed the relationship — maybe they haven't gotten to it, maybe they don't want to. Either way the review still shows and still counts. Silence can't bury it.
• Confirmed. The coach confirmed this person was their student. They do it blind — they see only the name, never the rating or the words — so a coach can't cherry-pick the good ones. A confirmed review wears the Confirmed badge and counts for more.
• Verified (coming later). When sessions are booked through Unsolvd, those reviews will be verified — the platform witnessed the transaction — and will count the most. Not live yet.

A coach's score is a weighted average of their overall review ratings. Three things set each review's weight:

• Tier — confirmed reviews count 1×; unconfirmed reviews count 0.67×. Both count — a confirmed review just carries about half again as much weight.
• Recency — reviews from the last 12 months count 1.5×. Older reviews count 1×. Recent experience reflects how a coach works today.
• Class — reviews of off-platform coaching count 0.6×. On-platform sessions, when they arrive, count 1×.

Then one more step. A score built from two reviews shouldn't outrank a score built from fifty. So every coach's average is pulled toward a baseline of 4.0, as if they started with 5 reviews at that baseline. A single great review won't outrank a long track record; a coach with many reviews barely feels the pull. The more real reviews a coach has, the more their own number speaks for itself.

weight(review) = tier × recency × class
  tier    = 0.67 unconfirmed · 1.0 confirmed   (verified: later)
  recency = 1.5 if within the last 12 months, else 1.0
  class   = 0.6 if off-platform, else 1.0

score = (Σ(weight × overall) + 4.0 × 5)
        / (Σ(weight) + 5)

That's the whole formula. The ranking is reproducible from review data alone — there is no manual thumb on the scale, and there is no way to pay for position. Featured placement, if it ever exists, will be a separate, clearly labeled slot that never touches organic order.

• Hold. Every review sits in a 48-hour hold before it publishes. Editing a review restarts the hold.
• Reply. A coach can reply once to any review. The reply is public and locks the review from further edits.
• Dispute. A coach can dispute a review. It leaves public view while under dispute and goes to a human moderator.
• Resolution. A resolved dispute returns the review to the profile with a public moderator note and a “Dispute resolved” badge.

Reviews are never silently deleted. There is no path for a coach to remove a review they don't like — only to reply, or to dispute it and have a human decide on the record.

Top Coach leaderboards include claimed profiles with at least five scorable reviews, ranked by the same weighted score. Unclaimed profiles keep their reviews but are held off the leaderboards until a coach claims and stands behind the listing.