The review process described below has been in effect on eBiz Facts since August 2024.
🎯 The Goal
The goal of our review process is to ensure that the overall rating displayed for each lottery website is fair and accurate.
Fair and accurate ratings help our readers make better informed decisions about which lottery sites to trust and which to avoid.
There are three parts to our review process…
- Editorial Review
- User Reviews
- Overall Rating
Editorial Review
Here we evaluate each lottery site based on factors such as…
- License
- Domain authority
- Social media presence
- Years of operation
- Website security
- Complaints or controversies
Each evaluation converts to a number, which plugs into our proprietary algorithm to calculate the editorial review score for the site (sometimes referred to as the expert rating).
Not all evaluation factors have the same impact on the editorial review score.
For example, whether or not a lottery site operates with a valid (and verifiable) license is given more weight than its social media following.
User Reviews
Here we accept ratings and reviews from users of the lottery site.
Our review form (example) is essentially a survey about their experience using the site.
Each answered question becomes a data point which we feed into our proprietary algorithm. This is combined with a trust score that we calculate for each reviewer.
Ultimately we crunch the numbers on all the submitted user ratings (and their trust scores) to arrive at a weighted average user rating.
Overall Rating
The overall rating displayed for each lottery site is determined by combining our editorial review score with the weighted average user rating.
As we publish more user reviews above a certain trust threshold, our editorial review score has less influence on the overall rating.
Ultimately user reviews have the biggest impact on the overall rating, since users know best how good (or bad) a lottery site is.
🤔 Frequently Asked Questions
How often do you update your reviews?
It depends.
We aim to update the overall rating of each reviewed lottery site every 1-2 months.
As for the editorial review of each site, a few things can trigger an update…
- Feedback from the lottery site
- Feedback from users
- A significant update to the site itself
- Our regular fact-check of the review content
How do affiliate links work in the reviews?
For every lottery site we review, we apply to be an affiliate (if an affiliate program exists).
If approved, the main call-to-action (CTA) on the review becomes an affiliate link to the site.
For example…
If we are not approved or no affiliate program exists, the main CTA becomes a link to view alternative sites…
This provides an incentive for each lottery site to establish and maintain an affiliate partnership with us: such a partnership results in more users flowing their way.
However, whether or not we are an affiliate for a lottery site has no impact on that site’s rating. We evaluate each site using the same process, regardless of partnerships.
Often this will result in us earning far less money than we could otherwise.
And we’re totally okay with that.
In the long run, we’re confident that things will work out financially so long as we do our best to review each site accurately and fairly and never lead our readers astray.
What if you get something wrong?
Despite our strict review process, sometimes we do make a mistake and publish inaccurate info about a lottery site.
We’re only human, after all 🤷♂️
But we make every effort to ensure that such mistakes are found and fixed ASAP.
A few ways we accomplish this…
- We email a link to our editorial review to the lottery site as soon as we publish, asking if they have any feedback or corrections.
- We quickly update the review and rating if the lottery site provides compelling evidence that we made a mistake.
- If the issue is more a difference of opinion with the lottery site, we offer to quote them in the review so they can have their say.
- We search online for users of the site and invite them to leave an honest review. We also ask the lottery site to send users our way. If the feedback from those users conflicts with our findings, we investigate further and update the editorial review as needed.
Unfortunately, some reviewees (ie. the lottery sites) find all the above to be insufficient, and simply threaten us with legal action if they don’t like our review 😱
For example, here’s an email we received from a reviewee after we sent along a link to our review, asked them to let us know if anything was factually incorrect, and noted that we’d be happy to update any errors…
We have received several such threats over the years and have never removed a review in response.
Usually what happens in these situations: the reviewee realizes that such bullying tactics are ineffective, and they eventually tell us what parts of the review they take issue with.
We evaluate their feedback and update the review if appropriate 👍
How do users submit a review of a lottery site?
There are multiple links to submit a review on each lottery site page.
For example…
Click on such a link and you’ll be taken to a review form, where we ask you to provide information about yourself and your experience with the lottery site.
How do you ensure user reviews are legit?
We do a few things to filter out fraudulent user reviews.
First of all, each reviewer must verify their email address before they can submit a review.
They must also provide a link to at least one active social media account or personal website, which we use to verify that they are a real person.
(A reviewer can opt to have their review published anonymously, but we still require them to provide a link to a social media account or personal website so we can verify their identity on the back-end.)
Lastly, we calculate a trust score for each user review, based on a number of factors.
For example…
- If they provided screenshot proof of site use
- How many years they’ve been using the site
- Recency of their review
The better the score, the more weight that user review will have on the overall rating of the site.
If a review seems suspicious or doesn’t provide enough insight, we follow up with the reviewer via email and/or social media to ask for more info.
Through this process, we end up rejecting 20-30% of all submitted reviews.
We do all this to avoid the Trustpilot trap, whereby even the most meaningless / spammy reviews get approved and apparently have equal impact on the overall rating.
For example…
Why are some user reviews marked as biased?
You may see the following message atop some user reviews…
This reviewer has a business relationship with the lottery site or a competitor. Not included in overall ratings.
We mark users as having a relationship with the lottery site if they answer YES to any of these survey questions…
- Are you an active affiliate of this lottery site (or a similar lottery site), regularly recommending that other people sign up via your affiliate link?
- Are you the owner of this lottery site, their employee, or business partner?
- Are you the owner of a similar lottery site, their employee, or business partner?
We still publish reviews from users who answer yes to one of those questions – so long as the review is insightful – but their rating doesn’t factor into the overall rating of the lottery site.
We do this to ensure the integrity of our reviews.
Otherwise it would be too easy for a lottery site to, for example, get their army of affiliates to submit positive reviews and boost the overall rating.
Can lottery sites respond to user reviews?
Yes.
A lottery site can send us their response to any user review and we will publish it so long as it adheres to our editorial standards.
(We never provide lottery sites with identifying or contact info of a reviewer unless we receive explicit permission from the user to do so.)
Can lottery sites remove user reviews?
A lottery site can request that a user review be removed, but we rarely oblige such requests.
The main exception is if the lottery site provides proof that a user review contains misinformation.
Questions or Comments?
If you have questions or comments about our review process, contact us here.
Written by 
