Earlier this year, we asked for feedback from our community of users and restaurant owners on a new way of showcasing restaurant ratings. We proposed a change in the system where we show two distinct ratings on a restaurant page – Delivery and Dining. The two experiences are completely different for a user and it made sense to us that we represent them so on our platform as well.

Luckily, all the feedback we got – from users and our restaurant partners alike – unanimously reaffirmed what we believed. Today, we have launched the new reviews & ratings system in our latest app release.

You will now see two ratings on the restaurant page telling you how users have rated food ordering and dining in experience with the chosen restaurant. The color scheme of black and red is retained throughout our app for ease of identification. The ratings will be contextual, i.e. when you are browsing restaurants to order food, you will only see the delivery rating indicated by red stars; similarly when you are planning to go out, you will only see the dining rating indicated by black stars.

This change is live across our food delivery markets – India, UAE and Lebanon. In the rest of the world, Zomato users will continue to see a single rating (indicated by black stars) powered by a new and improved algorithm. We hope this improves your browsing experience on Zomato and brings a more accurate prediction of your experience with each restaurant.

Continuing to bring you trustworthy reviews

We have been working hard on improving our ratings algorithm further. Over the years we have done several cleanups and tweaks to keep weeding out fake reviews, incidences of solicitation and bad actors from our system. We do this to ensure that we bring you 100% genuine and trustworthy reviews when you make your decision of which restaurant to order from/dine at.

With the most recent change in our algorithm, we have further beefed up our systems significantly (aided by machine learning) to reflect updated experience ratings, and to identify and remove fake reviews comprehensively. Our restaurant partners work extremely hard to ensure that every guest has a memorable experience. We don’t want the hard work of our honest partners to get undermined due to a few bad actors in the system. Some examples of such bad actors are –

• Users offering to write 5 star reviews in exchange for money or free meals
• Restaurants approaching users with a high Foodie Level on Zomato to write positive reviews for them in exchange for consideration
• PR agencies that farm users to write reviews for their clients

With this change all such bad actors and their actions have also been identified retrospectively, and the effect of their actions on a restaurant’s rating will be nullified. If a restaurant has engaged in review solicitation of any kind in the past, they will see a negative impact on their ratings with immediate effect.

Additionally, for restaurants who demonstrate a repeated pattern of solicitation, we will add a banner on their listing so users know that we have detected suspicious activity with respect to reviews by that restaurant.

Lastly, we want to reiterate that the ratings system of Zomato is at the core of our existence and runs independently without influence or compromise. Effective immediately, our ratings algorithm will be treated as our most precious Intellectual Property, and we will not be releasing any details about how the ratings are calculated. The very small team that knows the ins and outs of the system is bound by an NDA to not disclose it to anyone within or outside the organisation. Why? The fundamental trust that users have on our ratings cannot be undermined by deconstructing the system to optimise for one restaurant. Rest assured, the only way to improve your rating on Zomato is the same as it has always been – serve good & hygienic food and keep delighting your customers with your service.

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