Redirected Reviews on Trustpilot: What they are and why they can be dangerous for your review rofile

Every review published on a Trustpilot profile can directly influence the purchasing decisions of thousands of consumers.

But not every review that appears on the platform has the same origin, the same weight, or the same credibility.

Alongside spontaneous opinions and reviews verified after a real purchase, there is a third type of review that goes unnoticed by most users and that many companies don’t fully understand either: those marked with the “Redirected” label.

For those managing a brand’s online reputation, ignoring how this classification works can translate into unexpected sanctions, sharp drops in TrustScore, or public investigation notices that damage the profile’s image for months.

What is a redirected review on Trustpilot

A “redirected review” is a review left by a user who arrived at Trustpilot through a link published directly by the reviewed company.

This link can be embedded on the brand’s website, included in its email signature, visible on a thank-you page that appears right after a purchase, or distributed through its social media.

How can I identify a redirected review on Trustpilot

What sets this review apart from the others isn’t its content, its rating, or the identity of the user who writes it.

What sets it apart is the origin of the journey: the user didn’t arrive at Trustpilot on their own initiative, nor did they receive a formal invitation linked to a verifiable transaction.

They simply clicked on a button the company placed on a channel it controls itself, were redirected directly to that company’s profile within Trustpilot, and from there wrote their review.

Trustpilot detects this traffic, identifies that it comes from a domain associated with the brand, and automatically and irreversibly labels that review as “Redirected.”

What does the “Redirected” label mean on Trustpilot?

The “Redirected” label appears next to the review permanently, visible to anyone who consults the profile.

This label is not optional, cannot be hidden by the company, and does not disappear even if the brand removes the original link.

This matters because the context in which a review is generated directly affects its credibility. In other words, a review that arrived through a channel controlled by the company doesn’t carry the same backing as a review left spontaneously and completely independently.

The three types of reviews on Trustpilot

Trustpilot distinguishes between three different ways a review can appear on its platform.

Each one is identified with a different label, and understanding those differences is what allows you to correctly interpret what a company’s profile is actually communicating.

Organic reviews

This is the type of review where the user enters Trustpilot on their own, without anyone having invited or directed them, then searches for the company, accesses its profile, and leaves their opinion completely spontaneously.

It’s the type of review with the highest degree of independence, since there’s no intermediary between the customer’s experience and the platform.

Verified reviews

In these reviews, the company sends a specific invitation to the customer after a real transaction, usually through Trustpilot’s automated system.

The verification label confirms that there was a traceable commercial interaction between the company and the reviewer: there’s a record, there’s a date, there’s an identifiable customer. If a dispute arises about the legitimacy of that review, that trail can be consulted and contrasted.

Redirected reviews

The user reaches the company’s profile after clicking on a link placed by the brand itself in its communication channels.

It doesn’t require proof of transaction to be published. Trustpilot knows the user comes from a company link, but has no way to automatically confirm whether that user was really a customer, whether a real purchase took place, or when it occurred.

Differences between organic, verified, and redirected reviews

The main difference is that only verified reviews are backed by some kind of proof of transaction. Organic reviews depend on the spontaneous will of the user, and redirected ones depend exclusively on a channel controlled by the company.

You can consult the official classification directly on Trustpilot’s review labels page.

How redirected reviews reach Trustpilot

The technical process is relatively simple.

• The company places a visible link or button at some strategic point in its digital communication.
  
• When a customer clicks on that element, their browser takes them directly to that brand’s official Trustpilot profile.
  
• From there, the user can log in with an existing account or create a new one, and write their review.
  

Trustpilot detects the origin of that traffic through redirection parameters transmitted in the URL.

If the system confirms that the visitor comes from a domain linked to the reviewed company, it automatically assigns the “Redirected” label to any review that user publishes during that session.

Why this review classification exists on Trustpilot

This mechanism exists precisely to guarantee transparency. The platform doesn’t prohibit companies from placing links to their Trustpilot profiles: it’s a common and completely legitimate practice.

What it does do is make sure that anyone who reads those reviews knows exactly through which channel they arrived, so they can interpret their credibility with all the available information.

Where companies usually place these links

The most frequent places where these redirection links appear are the following:

• “Leave us your opinion” buttons on the homepage of the website or in the footer, accessible to any visitor at any time.
  
• Thank-you pages that appear right after the user completes a purchase, a reservation, or any other transactional action.
  
• Email signatures of the customer service team or the sales team, included in every message sent.
  
• Posts and stories on social media, especially when announcing campaigns, promotions, or company milestones.
  
• QR codes printed on invoices, physical packaging, business cards, or packaging material.
  

Each of these channels can generate perfectly legitimate and valid reviews.

The problem isn’t the channel itself, but how it’s used. When the link is placed strategically to capture only a very specific type of customer (the satisfied, the loyal, the one who just had a positive experience), the system starts producing a biased image that no longer represents the full reality of the business.

Why a redirected review isn’t the same as a verified one

Visually, a redirected review and a verified one look practically identical in the Trustpilot feed. Both show the star rating, the user’s text, the reviewer’s name, and the publication date.

The difference lies in the label and, more importantly, in what that label represents structurally.

The risks behind redirected reviews

The “Redirected” label doesn’t imply that the review is fake. It simply describes how it reached the platform.

But that arrival channel, when managed dishonestly or negligently, opens the door to several questionable uses that affect both consumers and the brands that compete on equal terms.

Cherry-picking and inflated ratings

Some companies place the redirection link only at those points of contact where they know with certainty that most customers are satisfied.

This pattern creates a systematic selection bias that’s very difficult to detect from the outside. Dissatisfied customers, those who had problems with shipping, who received a defective product, or who didn’t receive a response from customer service, never see the link.

They’re never invited to share their experience. Only happy customers end up participating.

Greater exposure to fake reviews

Since the redirection link is publicly available (in the site footer, on social media, in a QR code anyone can scan), anyone with internet access can use it to leave a review without ever having had any real commercial relationship with the company.

This includes the company’s own internal staff, who may be pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to leave positive reviews.

Sanctions from Trustpilot

Trustpilot actively monitors any suspicious patterns on its platform through a combination of automated systems and specialized human review.

If the system detects that a company is using redirection links in a biased or manipulative way, the consequences can be immediate and highly visible:

• Mass removal of the affected redirected reviews, which can cause the TrustScore to drop drastically from one day to the next.
  
• Visible reduction of the profile’s TrustScore, which is recorded in the public history.
  
• Public notice on the profile page explicitly indicating that the company is being investigated for possible irregularities, visible to anyone who consults the profile during that period.
  
• In severe cases, temporary or permanent suspension of the profile, or even legal actions by Trustpilot, especially when there is evidence of systematic manipulation.
  

These sanctions are completely visible to any consumer, journalist, investor, or competitor who visits the profile during the investigation period.

The reputational damage they generate can be enormously greater than the benefit the company thought it would obtain through cherry-picking.

How Trustpilot moderates redirected reviews

Trustpilot doesn’t leave the moderation of its platform to chance or to the goodwill of companies.

The platform has developed a control system that operates in three simultaneous layers to identify problematic reviews, including those that arrive through redirection channels.

• The first layer is completely automated: every review that’s published immediately goes through algorithmic detection systems.
  
• The second layer is human: the “Content Integrity Team” and the specialized Fraud & Investigations team manually review the cases that the automated system has flagged as suspicious.
  
• The third layer rests on the community: anyone who reads a profile can report a review they consider violates the platform’s rules.
  

Best practices for companies with legitimate redirected review programs

Many brands use redirection links in a completely honest way, giving neutral and equal access to all their customers and naturally accepting both positive and negative criticism.

If that’s your case, there are best practices that will allow you to protect your profile from unnecessary suspicion and build a solid, sustainable reputation in the long term:

• Place the redirection link in neutral and universally accessible locations.
  
• Combine redirection links with a formal invitation system.
  
• Never incentivize reviews with compensation of any kind.
  
• Respond to all reviews with the same level of professionalism.
  
• Periodically monitor the balance between the three types of reviews.
  

Conclusions on how to protect your profile from problematic redirected reviews

Redirected reviews are a completely legitimate tool when used with honesty and transparency.

However, this type of review also represents a point of vulnerability that can quickly turn into a serious reputational risk if managed negligently or if exploited by third parties with bad intentions.

The “Redirected” label is not intrinsically good or bad. What matters is the context in which those reviews are generated, the pattern they form within the profile, and the proportion in which they coexist with the other two types.