How We Calculate the Trust Duck Score
Six independently verifiable signals. 0–100 scale. No paid placements. Every point is earned.
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Score Overview
No checks run until a business is claimed. Submitting a listing makes it visible, but it is not scored, verified, or checked in any way — it shows as "Not Analyzed Yet" until the owner claims it. Claiming triggers technical checks and AI verification together.
No formula checks, no AI, no review data — nothing runs on free submission. The listing goes live so it can be found and claimed, but every signal on this page is 0 until the owner pays to claim it.
This is deliberate: scoring an unverified, unclaimed listing would mean assigning a trust signal to data nobody has confirmed belongs to a real business.
AI verification (90 pts) is instant and shown as a provisional score; the 100-point cap requires the mandatory human review that follows (15 pts). Premium was a separate, higher-priced tier — it's now legacy status on some older accounts and isn't sold to new signups; every current subscriber goes through the same AI + human review.
How Verification Works
Submission itself triggers nothing — a listing sits unscored until it's claimed. From there, up to three layers run, each adding more data confidence.
Technical Check — runs when a profile is claimed (parallel with AI, seconds)
- Website HTTPS and liveness confirmed by direct HTTP check
- Domain age looked up via RDAP — the public domain registration authority. No AI, no guesswork.
- Review platform URLs validated against known platform domains
- LinkedIn and Maps URLs checked for format and reachability
- Business address earns presence points even without a verified Maps listing
Every data point is stamped with source ("technical" or "rdap") and timestamp. Nothing is assumed.
Scrape Pass — runs weekly for all active listings
- Trustpilot, G2: scraped via JSON-LD structured data in the page
- Clutch: scraped via the widget API using the stored company ID
- Google Maps: rating and review count extracted from structured data
- Failed scrapes never overwrite previously known good data — only confirmed new data is written
A scraper failure means "we couldn't check this week" — not "the data changed." Previous values are preserved.
AI Verification — runs when a profile is claimed
- LinkedIn follower counts for company page and founder profile
- Confirms Maps listing belongs to the right business (not just that a listing exists)
- Red flag search: sanctions, fraud reports, regulatory actions
- Generates personalised improvement suggestions and a strengths summary
- All findings stored with source "ai" and timestamp
AI fills the gaps that direct scraping cannot — interpretation, context, and signals in unstructured text.
Signal Breakdown
External Reviews
We scrape Trustpilot, Clutch, G2, and directly and compute a weighted average across whichever platforms qualify. Each platform requires a minimum review count before it affects the score — this prevents a single review from inflating the result.
Platforms below the minimum still appear on the profile but do not affect the score. Weighting is by review count — more reviews means stronger signal from that platform.
LinkedIn Presence
We check combined follower count across the company page and founder profile. A large LinkedIn audience is harder to fabricate than most signals and indicates sustained professional credibility. Follower counts are checked by AI — they are not available via public scraping.
Web Presence & Domain Age
Domain age is checked via RDAP — the official public registry used by domain registrars globally. This is the same source your registrar consults. It is authoritative, not estimated. A business that has kept a domain alive for 10+ years has demonstrated staying power that cannot be faked retroactively.
Example: active HTTPS site (3) + 8-year-old domain (3) = 6/7. A new HTTPS site scores 3/7 — not penalised, just less history to verify.
Press Presence
We search worldwide news coverage for the business name and count how many distinct outlets have written about it. Coverage on the company's own website does not count — press means someone else wrote about you.
Wikipedia & Wikidata
We look the business up in Wikidata — the structured knowledge base behind Wikipedia — and only count an entry whose registered official website matches the business domain. This prevents name collisions from crediting the wrong company. An actual Wikipedia article adds further points. These are among the hardest signals to fake: notable coverage requires independent sources.
Physical Presence
A verified Maps listing is the strongest physical presence signal, but it is not the only one. Many legitimate businesses — remote companies, home-based operations, and businesses using registered agent addresses — cannot get a verified Maps listing for their registered address. Providing that address still earns points for transparency.
Apple Maps and Bing Places are accepted as alternatives to Google Maps and scored identically. Remote businesses and those using law office or registered-agent addresses are explicitly supported.
Profile Completeness
Proportional to how many of the 8 core fields are filled. Fields: business name, website, description (50+ words), founder name, email, LinkedIn URL, Maps or address, one review platform URL.
8 fields filled = 7 pts. 6 fields = 5 pts. 4 fields = 3 pts. The formula is linear: (fields filled ÷ 8) × 7, rounded.
Data Confidence Labels
Each profile shows a label reflecting how much of its data has been independently confirmed — separate from the numeric score.
Passed mandatory human review — incorporation status and legal/ethical business practices confirmed by a Trust Duck team member, on top of full AI verification.
Full AI verification completed, provisional score shown — LinkedIn, Maps, domain age, and red flags confirmed. Awaiting the mandatory human review that follows.
Website, domain age (RDAP), and review platform URLs confirmed by direct technical checks.
Information provided by the submitter. Some signals confirmed, most not yet independently checked.
Most signals could not be verified. Treat this listing with caution until more data is available.
Claim Tiers
Claiming your profile raises the score cap and upgrades your verification level. There's now one paid tier — AI verification followed by mandatory human review.
- Listing goes live immediately
- No checks run — shown as "Not Analyzed Yet"
- Free to submit and browse
- Claim to unlock scoring
- Full AI verification (provisional score, up to 90)
- Mandatory human review follows — incorporation + legal/ethical practices confirmed (up to 15 more)
- LinkedIn follower counts, Maps listing confirmed
- Verified badge
- A separate, higher-priced tier from an earlier pricing model
- Existing Premium accounts keep their status
- No longer available to new signups — everyone now gets the same AI + human review
- Crown badge (existing accounts only)
Score Improvement
Every AI-verified profile includes a personalised assessment — what the business is doing well and specific steps to raise the score. These appear on the company profile for the owner after claiming.
Suggestions are specific and point-denominated — for example: “Reach 5 Trustpilot reviews to qualify for the external review score (up to 47 pts)” or “A verified Google Maps listing would add up to 8 pts.” The goal is to help good businesses improve, not just assign a number.
Red Flags & Disqualification
Regardless of other scores, these signals trigger mandatory human review:
Flagged businesses are held in pending status until a team member reviews. One-sided blog posts or anonymous claims do not trigger a flag — only credible, independent, documented sources.
Score Labels
When Scores Update
- At submission — nothing runs; listing shows as "Not Analyzed Yet"
- Claim + subscribe — technical check + full AI verification together, provisional score cap rises to 90
- Mandatory human review follows — incorporation + legal/ethical practices confirmed, cap rises to 100. (Premium is a separate legacy status on some older accounts, not sold to new signups.)
- Weekly automated scrape — external platform scores refreshed for all active listings (failed scrapes never overwrite existing data)
- Admin re-score — can be triggered on any listing at any time
Ready to get scored?
Submit your business for free, then claim it to get scored.