Your public profile page

If you publish your public profile, anyone with the link can see how customers rate you. This article describes what they see. To switch it on or off, see Publish your public profile.

What a visitor sees

The page is one screen and needs no login. From top to bottom:

• your logo, if you added one, and your business name
• the line "Customer ratings, collected by RateMate"
• your average score, to one decimal place, next to a star
• the number of ratings it is based on
• "Collecting ratings since" and the month and year of your first rating
• a bar for each score from 5 down to 1, with how many ratings and what percentage each one has
• a note that every rating was left by a customer of your business, through RateMate, and that you cannot pick which ratings show or hide a low one

Low scores are included

The bars show every score, the 1s and 2s as well as the 5s. The average is worked out from all your ratings. Walk-in ratings from your QR code count too, but the test message you send during setup does not.

What is never shown

• customer names, phone numbers or emails
• comments
• the date of each rating, or which job or team member it was for

The page also has no link inviting a visitor to leave a review. It only displays totals.

Can Google find it?

Yes. The page is not hidden from search engines. It is listed in RateMate's sitemap, and RateMate's robots rules let crawlers read it. Its title is your business name followed by "reviews and ratings".

That makes it possible for the page to come up when someone searches for you. It is not a promise. Whether Google shows it, or shows stars next to it, is up to Google. The link also ends in a few random characters, but that is only to keep it unique, and it does not keep the page private.

Customer rating links (the ones sent in messages) and your QR code page are different. They tell search engines to stay away.

Good to know

• The page needs a minimum number of ratings before it shows. See Publish your public profile. Until then, and when you unpublish, a visitor sees a "page not found" error.
• It updates as new ratings come in.
• It keeps working if your subscription lapses, because it collects nothing. Closing your account removes it for good.