ToolsAnalytics
Review Dispersion Analyzer
Enter your star distribution and get an authenticity signal, weighted average, and what the shape of your reviews tells buyers.
Your star distribution
weighted average
The shape
- Reviews counted
- Standard deviation
- At the extremes (1 and 5 star)
- Five star share
Common questions
What does review dispersion reveal that a single average does not?
The shape of the distribution tells buyers whether the average is credible. A product with 90 percent five-star reviews and almost no three- or four-star reviews often appears fabricated. A realistic distribution for a genuinely good product typically has 70 to 80 percent five-star reviews, a smaller cluster of fours, and a visible tail of ones and twos.
What is the J-curve distribution?
The J-curve is the most common authentic review distribution: a high peak of five-star reviews, a small number of four-star reviews, a dip in the middle, and a small bump at one star from dissatisfied customers. This shape appears consistently across product categories and correlates with higher conversion rates than perfectly uniform distributions.
How does review dispersion affect AI citation likelihood?
AI systems that summarise product reviews weight dispersion signals when assessing credibility. A suspiciously uniform distribution (all fives, no variation) is a pattern associated with manipulated reviews in academic research on review systems. Pages with more realistic dispersion are more likely to be cited as trustworthy sources in AI-generated summaries.