Is 4.3 the New 5.0? How Fiverr's Rating System is Jeopardizing Profiles and Gigs

[alexiscottray]

3 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

but I thought they talked about the overall account's average rating only looking at the last 2 years now, maybe not the gig's avg rating. But maybe the gig avg works like that now too

Thank you, this is the point, if the gig avg score is based on the last couple of years, then it will be come fairer in the future. But if it's not, then this is putting new gigs and new profiles in danger. 

With an average number of reviews of 10-100 max per gig and around 650 overall reviews on my profile after 4 years on Fiverr, this system is obviously impacting me more VS a profile with 5-7k reviews PER GIG. 

Because I work a lot with milestones and 4-5 week orders, I obviously take less orders for a higher budget, and this system is not helping my kind of business as I don't have the same repeat and rotation services VS other profiles where they can "absorb" the negative comments and still maintain a great gig avg score that will probably always be around 5.0 or 4.9. Example of the excel sheet before when you have around 7000 existing reviews on your gig. 

Edited November 30, 2024 by alexiscottray

[alexiscottray]

I wanted to raise this concern on the forum since my recent experience on a new service. 

Everything went fine as long as I had 7 review - gig rating score 5.0 

One day, I've delivered an urgent order and the client rated 4.0 on the review "Thank you so much, this is great!" 

My gig went from 5.0 to 4.8 instantly and all the stats dropped down during weeks.

I was using Fiverr Ads, still, lower impressions and clicks and I finally paused the gig. For one experience and one rating only, the gig simply became outdated. 

[donnovan86]

14 minutes ago, alexiscottray said:

But if it's not, then this is putting new gigs and new profiles in danger.

The thing is, you are compared with people within your niche. It doesn't matter if others have thousands of reviews in other niches. What matters is your niche. At least when it comes to ranking. Human perception.. that's up to the buyer obviously. I am not sure what you expect though.. Fiverr to have a system where new sellers will always have a 5 star rating for a few months, where the rating is not lowered even if reviews are not the best from customers? If that's the case, that would be extremely unfair towards people that have been working their ass off for years. 

I agree some people leave reviews randomly and I've been a victim of that myself, many times. But overall, things iron out eventually when you will have more orders. 

1 minute ago, alexiscottray said:

I was using Fiverr Ads, still, lower impressions and clicks and I finally paused the gig. For one experience and one rating only, the gig simply became outdated. 

Fiverr ads don't really matter now because everyone has access to them. So it's pretty much paying for exposure against others that pay for exposure, so it's no different than regular search. Only Fiverr has to gain here, because you pay for more exposure, without any guarantee of getting it. Not sure about you, but my results have been abysymal during the last 2 months or so since everyone had access to the promoted gigs feature. So yeah, I wouldn't rely on that for more orders, at least in my case it's a waste.

[alexiscottray]

1 minute ago, donnovan86 said:

Fiverr ads don't really matter now because everyone has access to them. So it's pretty much paying for exposure against others that pay for exposure, so it's no different than regular search. Only Fiverr has to gain here, because you pay for more exposure, without any guarantee of getting it. Not sure about you, but my results have been abysymal during the last 2 months or so since everyone had access to the promoted gigs feature. So yeah, I wouldn't rely on that for more orders, at least in my case it's a waste.

Same effect simply happened on the total of impressions and clicks after receiving the 4/5 star review and switching from a 5.0 star service to a 4.8 service with low number of reviews. 

If you consider a mainstream service like SEO https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=seo you can see that the first page should contain 45% of 5.0 scores - 45% of 4.9 score and maybe 10% of 4.7-4.8 scores 

[alexiscottray]

Just now, alexiscottray said:

Same effect simply happened on the total of impressions and clicks after receiving the 4/5 star review and switching from a 5.0 star service to a 4.8 service with low number of reviews. 

If you consider a mainstream service like SEO https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=seo you can see that the first page should contain 45% of 5.0 scores - 45% of 4.9 score and maybe 10% of 4.7-4.8 scores 

I mostly agree with you @donnovan86 but the algorithm on the Fiverr search results page tells the contrary. 

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, alexiscottray said:

the algorithm on the Fiverr search results page tells the contrary. 

That's because public reviews you see are very minor to non-important when it comes to ranking. Private reviews, cancellations and a lot of other stuff has way more weight when it comes to ranking. And since Fiverr will never disclose everything taken into account while ranking.. we can only go with the info we have. At least the success score system brought us a score and some details about each gig, what's bad, very bad, etc. Before that, we had 0 info and a gig could drop without even having any idea. At least now we kinda know what's the thing to focus on.

[alexiscottray]

13 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

That's because public reviews you see are very minor to non-important when it comes to ranking. Private reviews, cancellations and a lot of other stuff has way more weight when it comes to ranking. And since Fiverr will never disclose everything taken into account while ranking.. we can only go with the info we have. At least the success score system brought us a score and some details about each gig, what's bad, very bad, etc. Before that, we had 0 info and a gig could drop without even having any idea. At least now we kinda know what's the thing to focus on.

And still, inside the first page of results, not even one gig below 4.7 

That could explain what happened to the gig I have paused when I received the 4/5 review and the gig went from 5.0 to 4.8 and all the stats dropped. With one single review, this is something that can easily happen on new services, and this is the whole point of my topic here. 

[farshad19rodar]

I get ratings like 4.3, 4.7, and 4.0 from clients who are happy with my work. they even message me right after delivery to discuss placing new orders. It’s frustrating because I can not talk about why they gave me 4 when they are super happy with the result! as Fiverr doesn’t allow it, and I risk getting a warning. For now, all I can do is focus on my work and hope Fiverr eventually adjusts this new review system, at the moment it is not good at all.

Edited December 1, 2024 by farshad19rodar

[alexiscottray]

6 minutes ago, farshad19rodar said:

I get ratings like 4.3, 4.7, and 4.0 from clients who are happy with my work. they even message me right after delivery to discuss placing new orders. It’s frustrating because I can not talk about why they gave me 4 when they are super happy with the result! as Fiverr doesn’t allow it, and I risk getting a warning. For now, all I can do is focus on my work and hope Fiverr eventually adjusts this new review system, at the moment it is not good at all.

So I understand it's against TOCs to "manipulate reviews" but there is a blank about what happens if you simply want to explain to the client that you don't want to continue the collaboration because another same rating could damage your profile / gig, as simple as it is.

And here I wanted to take an action with CS because I also think "let's wait and pray they fix it" but if they don't see the issue and no one talks about it, then it will just remain as it is. 

[donnovan86]

3 hours ago, alexiscottray said:

And here I wanted to take an action with CS because I also think "let's wait and pray they fix it" but if they don't see the issue and no one talks about it, then it will just remain as it is. 

I think there was a 50+ page topic on this alone, Fiverr knows the situation, and all that topic did was it encouraged Fiverr to change reviews from emoticons back to stars. As for 4.3 and 4.7, I am sure Fiverr wants that so not everyone has 5 stars. The benefit is, if you barely have a few review, you can start a new gig and you won't lose that much. But with an older gig, that's harder, you actually need a lot of reviews to get back to 5.0.

[katakatica]

4 hours ago, alexiscottray said:

And here I wanted to take an action with CS because I also think "let's wait and pray they fix it" but if they don't see the issue and no one talks about it, then it will just remain as it is. 

As @donnovan86 said as well, there's been lots of posts about it. Staff is aware and have been for a very long time (you might not know this though if you don't visit here often!)

Many of us have been advocating for loads of small quality of life changes, reporting bugs and even giving our honest opinions directly to staff in some cases. 

It's not that we are hoping things get fixed without saying anything. We are doing our best - but just because people are complaining, the company won't just go back to an old system (or change things up, etc.) 

 

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, katakatica said:

Many of us have been advocating for loads of small quality of life changes, reporting bugs and even giving our honest opinions directly to staff in some cases. 

 

Even if I am not affected as much by that 20x the order, 1x the deadline problem, it's still there, and staff knows, it was acknowledged on the forum by multiple Fiverr staff members. And it's one of the many issues, like having unlimited revisions provided to customer even if you want to limit them to 3 for example. The system will always allow people to ask for as many revisions as they want, even if you limited the amount of revisions you offer. And as you said, that's just the tip of the iceberg, there are tons and tons of other problems, smaller or more important that were not solved for years now.

 

[lenasemenkova]

I started turning buyers away after 2 x 4.7*s (or 4.3*s) in a row. One is a misclick, two is them chipping away at my profile. I need some wiggle room for an actual average to bad review. Can’t have it cluttered by all this “transparency”. 

Quote

1x the deadline problem

My personal favorite of them all.

Edited December 1, 2024 by lenasemenkova

[husnainalihamza]

Come on guyz this new rating system is just dooming the profiles and gigs, Even customer/Clients dont know how it is working, a person can easily convert his satisfaction level to quantitative numbers like 5.0 , 4.7, 4.3 etc but one need to be educated on how their qualitative rating against their satisfaction will be converted into quantitative rating, Thats completely unfair.

Either the fiverr should move away from quantitative rating system entirely and display rating of profiles in statements like Best provider, Excellent provider, Good Provider etc or it should change the rating system back to the numbering game.

Also its responsibility of all the sellers who are facing this issue to report this to fiverr teams as their feedback to new rating system, it will help fiverr to improve its services, Since they are testing so much stuff.

Edited December 1, 2024 by husnainalihamza

[donnovan86]

29 minutes ago, husnainalihamza said:

Thats completely unfair.

Clearly the system was made to stop everyone from having 5 star reviews across the board. And it did, at least some people are affected, and we see more and more 4.8 and 4.9 star reviews on average for gigs, when last year around this time, there were only 5 star reviews across the board. I am sure that was the intention, to have less people with perfect reviews because it's much harder for customers to pick someone.

[mrubaid820]

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

some people are affected,

And some of them are new sellers who don’t have many reviews. Honestly, Fiverr’s new rating system is more applicable for long-term projects, where the seller and buyer get more opportunities to communicate and understand each other, like on Upwork. It’s not as suitable for short-term projects, where buyers are often in a hurry, and they don’t get the chance to know each other well.

In my opinion, the real issue is that no one can become 'exceptional' in a short-term project. To become exceptional, you need to work long-term so that both you and your buyer can understand each other well. Here, it’s all about one-day, two-day, three-day, or four-day deliveries. If you think about it, the definition of 'exceptional' implies long-term commitment.

[donnovan86]

16 minutes ago, mrubaid820 said:

In my opinion, the real issue is that no one can become 'exceptional' in a short-term project.

Well, the thing is, people rate the work provided, they can also rate communication, but realistically, you don't need to have a personal connection with each client. Some people will come back, but there are also people that just buy something that's a one-and-done thing. I had people purchase a letter for a specific business idea they wanted to promote, they were happy with it, so they rated it very well. However, I also have people that continue to place orders for over 8 years or more. 

So in my opinion, it doesn't matter the length of the project. If you deliver great results, I really doubt that buyers will leave a bad review. And in many cases, the 4.3 or 4.7 is justified, there can be a revision, or the buyer wanted things to be a bit faster or the quality could be slightly better. I do agree that there are also people who rate randomly, and the mobile app bug where they leave all 5 stars yet the result still has 4 stars in one of the 3 criteria hasn't been fixed yet. 

I think a lot of buyers come just to buy something now and they won't continue working with that person because they don't need that type of service anymore. As long as you deliver good work, you shouldn't be worried. Sure, some people might cut a star or two here and there, but for a lot of buyers, written reviews matter. I can say that for certain based on my own experiences with buyers, even during the past few weeks. 

 

[alexiscottray]

16 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

I think there was a 50+ page topic on this alone, Fiverr knows the situation, and all that topic did was it encouraged Fiverr to change reviews from emoticons back to stars. As for 4.3 and 4.7, I am sure Fiverr wants that so not everyone has 5 stars. The benefit is, if you barely have a few review, you can start a new gig and you won't lose that much. But with an older gig, that's harder, you actually need a lot of reviews to get back to 5.0.

It's easier for older gigs as you already have hundreds or thousands or reviews and to change your gig rating score, it will be very hard to do so. 

When a old gig needs to receive 100+ bad reviews to slightly change the gig avg rating (from 5.0 to 4.9 for instance) I only need one review for this, so no, it's not a system made for new profiles and new gigs, you are totally wrong here. 

[alexiscottray]

14 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

Even if I am not affected as much by that 20x the order, 1x the deadline problem, it's still there, and staff knows, it was acknowledged on the forum by multiple Fiverr staff members. And it's one of the many issues, like having unlimited revisions provided to customer even if you want to limit them to 3 for example. The system will always allow people to ask for as many revisions as they want, even if you limited the amount of revisions you offer. And as you said, that's just the tip of the iceberg, there are tons and tons of other problems, smaller or more important that were not solved for years now.

 

Ok so what is your recommendation? Not talk about the issues? Why having the forum then if I cannot talk about "My Fiverr Experience" ? 

[alexiscottray]

12 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

Clearly the system was made to stop everyone from having 5 star reviews across the board. And it did, at least some people are affected, and we see more and more 4.8 and 4.9 star reviews on average for gigs, when last year around this time, there were only 5 star reviews across the board. I am sure that was the intention, to have less people with perfect reviews because it's much harder for customers to pick someone.

Except on the gigs that have more than 1k+ reviews and will stay for years at 5.0 

[alexiscottray]

10 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

If you deliver great results, I really doubt that buyers will leave a bad review.

And still, in this topic, I am talking about all the customers leaving 4.0 / 4.3 when fully satisfied and want to come back ASAP. 

[donnovan86]

  

Just now, alexiscottray said:

Except on the gigs that have more than 1k+ reviews and will stay for years at 5.0 

I think I told you 5 times now that Fiverr only tracks the last 2 years. Average reviews change because of that, even if you have a ton of reviews, if you're slacking, it will damage your reputation. Obviously you just care about your situation now which is understandable, and fail to see the larger picture. Everyone is affected by a bad review. 

Just now, alexiscottray said:

And still, in this topic, I am talking about all the customers leaving 4.0 / 4.3 when fully satisfied and want to come back ASAP. 

Talk to them, ask them what was wrong and learn from that. Don't mention the number of stars because it will get you banned eventually for review manipulation.

3 minutes ago, alexiscottray said:

Ok so what is your recommendation? Not talk about the issues? Why having the forum then if I cannot talk about "My Fiverr Experience" ? 

It was already talked about countless times and nothing was changed. Nor should it be changed, because why would new gigs or sellers have any protection when older sellers don't? It's very important for the platform to maintain equality and not be very biased one way or another. So objectively, I don't see them changing anything about this anytime soon. I would even venture to say that they wanted buyers to leave more reviews under 5 stars, they even allow canceled orders to be reviewed now. 

9 minutes ago, alexiscottray said:

I only need one review for this, so no, it's not a system made for new profiles and new gigs, you are totally wrong here. 

So when a new search engine enters the market, Google has to offer them a certain market share? Is that what you want? That's not how real business works. If you want to stand out, you need to show you're the best of the best in what you do. Delete gigs that have just a few reviews and which you think won't have good performance. Most successful sellers had dozens of gigs over the years, we experiment, we see what happens and go from there. I deleted many gigs with 10 or even 100 reviews because the demand was not there anymore, or like you, I had people rating that gig randomly with 3.0 reviews saying very good work, thank you.

It's not like this is a new issue or anything, it's been the same for a decade since I've been here. There will always be people that leave random reviews and there's nothing you can really do about that. Do you really think Fiverr will delete those reviews and replace them with 5.0? They won't. And they won't offer a different review average calculation for other gigs, either. It would be unfair to anyone else. 

I am just wasting my time trying to help you and explain. I'll just use my time better elsewhere. 

[alexiscottray]

Just now, donnovan86 said:

I think I told you 5 times now that Fiverr only tracks the last 2 years. Average reviews change because of that, even if you have a ton of reviews, if you're slacking, it will damage your reputation. Obviously you just care about your situation now which is understandable, and fail to see the larger picture. Everyone is affected by a bad review. 

The improvements I am suggesting here will also have a positive affect on your profile @donnovan86 so it's an improvement for everyone. And I also told you 3 times now that this topic is about "My Fiverr Experience", so I am not asking for your replies here. 

[alexiscottray]

2 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

Talk to them, ask them what was wrong and learn from that. Don't mention the number of stars because it will get you banned eventually for review manipulation.

Once and once again (it looks like you don't read my comments...) I am talking here about cases where users are actually FULLY satisfied and want to come back with new orders. So actually when I ask for the feedback they say "it was perfect, send me a new offer"... As a matter of fact, this is the issue. The buyer is happy and doesn't understand that providing a 4/5 star review actually means that he is not fully happy. 

[alexiscottray]

4 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

It's very important for the platform to maintain equality and not be very biased one way or another.

But this system is actually jeopardizing profiles as fully explained here. So it's not maintaining equality even if that was their goal, the actual result is different from what they had in mind.