Existing Trustpilot reviews stay online when a business or website changes hands, but letting people know about the new ownership can be an opportunity to build trust.
New business owners can claim or update the business's profile page on Trustpilot and engage with previous customers by replying to any unanswered reviews. This is possible through our free or paid services.
Reviews stay online
We understand that when new owners take over a business or website, they may want to have the existing Trustpilot reviews on that business's profile page removed. This would allow them to start with a clean slate, and gather reviews about the service they provide.
However, we don’t remove reviews if the reviewed business or website is taken over by new owners.
New ownership doesn’t change or invalidate the experiences that reviewers had with the business at the time they wrote their reviews. We believe that removing these reviews would be inconsistent with our core values of trust and transparency, because we would be removing content that is a genuine expression of the reviewers’ buying or service experiences.
What businesses can do
To let our community know about a business takeover or new ownership, we suggest that businesses update and customize their profile pages to include that information, and the date of the takeover. This can be done for free.
It can also be beneficial for new business owners to look through and reply to any unanswered reviews - especially negative or critical reviews. Aside from learning what previous customers did or didn't like about the old business, it’s also an opportunity to inform reviewers about the change of ownership.
We’d also add that on Trustpilot, reviews are shown in chronological order with the newest ones first, and the TrustScore gives most weight to recent reviews. This is because we believe that new reviews provide the best indication of the current level of customer satisfaction.
Over time, this means that the most visible reviews (those on the first page of a business's profile), the business's rating, and the TrustScore will reflect the performance of the new owners, even though all of the older reviews remain. You can read more about how the TrustScore is calculated here.