The Rulebook.
Local Review Club is a private society of local business owners who exchange honest reviews. We are not a marketing service, an agency, or a growth hack. We are a co-operative, and a co-operative only works when its members keep faith with each other. This is the whole of our pledge. There is nothing hidden behind it.
Every review is written by the reviewer.
Members write their own reviews, in their own words, based on their own experience. We do not use AI-generated text, templates, copy-paste, or dictation. A review that did not originate in a member's mind is not a review; it is advertising copy, and we do not permit it.
Why: Google's SpamBrain and Yelp's recommendation software both pattern-match on linguistic fingerprints. Templated or AI-generated review text is detectable at scale and poisons the profiles of everyone it touches. One templated review doesn't just disappear — it gets the business flagged and can trigger removal of legitimate reviews alongside it.
Scenario: A member writes what they observed on their consultation — specific details about what the contractor said, what the office looked like, how long the appointment took. That's a review. A member pastes three sentences of ChatGPT output about "professionalism and attention to detail" — that's not a review, it's a forgery, and it is grounds for removal.
Every review is preceded by a real experience.
Before a member reviews a business, they must actually use that business's service. A consultation, a phone call, a video meeting, or an in-person visit — virtual is welcome, but it must be real. We do not permit drive-by reviews. A review written without an experience is dishonest, and dishonesty is outside the charter.
Why: The FTC's Final Rule (16 CFR Part 465) explicitly prohibits reviews from people who did not experience the service, with penalties of up to $53,088 per violation. Beyond the law, drive-by reviews are the single defining feature of fake review brokers — and the reason we exist. If we allow one, we become one.
Scenario: A member is matched with a chiropractor two hours away. A thirty-minute video consultation about posture counts as a real experience. Skipping the consultation and leaving a review does not. If travel isn't feasible, virtual-first service is welcome — but the service must happen.
Ratings are honest, whatever they are.
A member is free to award three stars, four stars, or five stars — whatever they genuinely feel. The Club never requires, requests, incentivizes, or pressures a specific rating. Businesses that demand high ratings are breaking the charter. Businesses that receive honest three-star reviews keep their membership intact.
Why: A profile that is 100% five-star is a signal of manipulation, not quality. Google's SpamBrain and Yelp's filter both treat uniform perfect ratings as suspicious. A healthy distribution — mostly fours and fives, with occasional threes — reads as authentic to both algorithms and humans. Protecting the right to a three-star review is protecting every member's profile from looking fake.
Scenario: A member gets matched with a remodeling contractor whose work is solid but whose communication is slow. Four stars, with a note about responsiveness, is an honest review and exactly what the Club wants. If the member then gets a private message from that contractor demanding a five-star edit, the contractor is expelled — not the reviewer.
No direct swaps.
Member A reviews Member B. Member B does not review Member A in return. The matching engine routes reviews through the community so that no two members form a detectable pair. Direct reciprocation is a pattern, and patterns are how fraud detection works. We do not arrange patterns.
Why: Google's spam systems are excellent at detecting reciprocation graphs. If Business A's reviewer is also reviewed by Business A within 30 days, the edge gets a heavy suspicion weight, and at scale it triggers removal of both reviews plus a black mark against both profiles. One-for-one trading is the tell of a review ring, whether it's honest or not. The matching engine exists to keep honest exchanges indistinguishable from organic customer flow.
Scenario: A real estate agent hires a plumber through the Club and later leaves an honest five-star review. The plumber is not matched back to the agent. Instead, the agent will be reviewed — weeks or months later — by a different member, possibly three or four hops removed in the graph. The reciprocity is systemic, not direct.
Reviews arrive at a natural pace.
A member's reviews arrive at one to three per week. Not twenty in a day. Sudden spikes trigger fraud filters and harm every member in the Club. Patience is part of the dues.
Why: Review velocity is a ranking signal and a fraud signal simultaneously. A business that goes from 2 reviews per month to 30 in a week will have most of those 30 filtered or removed — Google and Yelp both treat bursts as manipulation. Organic review flow for even a very active business looks like one to five per week, with variance. Our pacing mirrors what real businesses actually see, which is the point.
Scenario: A dentist joins the Club in February. By March, they've received 8 reviews. By year-end, 100+. This looks like a busy dental practice with happy patients. A dentist who receives 50 reviews in one week looks like a review ring. The math is fine either way; the pattern is what matters.
Membership is vetted.
Every applicant is verified: real business, real person, not an agency, not a broker, not a bad actor. We confirm the business, the owner, and the referral. Applicants who misrepresent themselves are refused, and members who are later found to have misrepresented themselves are removed.
Why: Bad actors destroy cooperatives. One agency posing as five "businesses" to farm reviews poisons every legitimate member they touch. We verify at admission because removing bad actors after the damage is done is impossible — the reviews they left won't unwrite themselves, and the profile contamination follows every member who received those reviews.
Scenario: An "owner" of a wellness studio applies for membership. In verification, we find the GBP is registered to an SEO agency that manages 40 other wellness clients, and the applicant's LinkedIn shows they are a customer success rep at that agency, not the studio owner. Application refused. Later, a current member is discovered to have been reselling Club access to other businesses — immediate expulsion, reviews they left get disclosed to the affected businesses, and refunds issued where owed.
The Club is non-profit.
Membership dues are ninety-nine dollars per year, per business, for as long as the Club exists. The dues cover hosting, bot infrastructure, vetting, and moderation, and no more. No one profits from a member's reviews. No premium tier exists above you. No investor expects a return. If costs fall, dues fall. That is the arrangement.
Why: The moment someone profits from reviews, the incentives to cheat grow faster than any enforcement can contain. Every commercial review platform eventually faces the same pressure: investors want growth, growth requires scale, scale requires loosening standards, loosened standards let bad actors in. We removed that pressure by removing the profit motive. The Club is a cost center, not a business.
Scenario: In 2027, our hosting and moderation costs come in 18% below budget because bot traffic dropped. Dues for 2028 are reduced accordingly. In 2029, Stripe processing fees rise and verification costs increase; dues rise by the exact amount needed to cover it, with a public accounting posted to the site. No investor wanted a return, no founder took a bonus, no reserve was built up for an exit. The math is public and the charter enforces it.