CercaClaro's review policy

In short: CercaClaro only publishes first-party reviews, tied wherever possible to a genuine enquiry or quote request made through the site. Every review carries a provenance label (verified lead, invited or unverified), businesses can reply publicly but never delete a review, and star ratings only appear once a listing has five or more verified reviews. We’re switching this on gradually, listing by listing, starting with Madrid.

What “first-party review” means here

We don’t buy or import reviews from anywhere else. Every review on CercaClaro comes from someone who had a traceable interaction with that business through our platform — a quote request, a contact message, or a call logged from the listing. Where we can, we ask for light proof of that relationship (a request reference, the service date) before publishing. That’s different from pulling in ratings from Google Maps or other directories, which we don’t do; see our methodology and verification pages for the rest of the ground rules.

The three provenance labels

Every review always carries one of three labels, shown next to the text:

• Verified lead: the reviewer requested a quote or contact through CercaClaro, and we can confirm that interaction in our own records. This is our highest-confidence tier.
• Invited: the business or the reviewer pointed us to a genuine service that didn’t go through our contact form, so we have no record of our own to confirm it.
• Unverified: we haven’t been able to confirm the contact at the time of publishing. The review stays visible with this label while we look into it, unless it breaks our moderation rules.

We never mark a review as verified when it isn’t. An honest label beats a nice-looking badge — the Spanish term for this, reseña verificada, is what you’ll see on the Spanish-language site.

Star ratings only appear once there’s enough to go on

A listing shows no average rating until it has at least five reviews labelled “verified lead”. Below that, you’ll still see individual comments, just no aggregate score — five reviews aren’t enough for an average to mean much, and showing one too early would be misleading. For the same reason, we never import or blend star ratings from other sites into ours.

Businesses can reply — they can’t delete

Any verified professional can post a public reply under a review on their own listing, under their own name. They can clarify a misunderstanding, add context, or apologise. What they can’t do is remove a review just because they don’t like it: a review only comes down if it breaks our rules (abuse, someone else’s personal details, fabricated content, adverts) or if, after a dispute, we find it doesn’t correspond to a genuine contact. This follows the same principle as our editorial policy: editorial independence isn’t up for negotiation, whether or not the business has sponsored placement on the site.

How we catch fake reviews and moderate

Before publishing, every review goes through a check that combines automated signals (generic wording, bursts of reviews from the same IP address or device, matches against past contacts) with human review in borderline cases. We reject or remove a review if:

• We can’t tie it to any genuine contact with the business.
• We spot patterns typical of bought or traded reviews — several near-identical reviews landing in a short window, for instance.
• It contains abuse, threats, someone else’s personal data, or content unrelated to the service provided.
• It was written by a competitor, an employee, or someone with an undeclared conflict of interest.

If you’re wondering how we handle personal data inside a review, see our privacy and cookies pages.

If you disagree: disputes and appeals

Both the business and the reviewer can ask us to look again at a moderation decision through our corrections page — just name the listing, the review, and the reason. Someone on the editorial team other than whoever made the original call reviews the case and replies in writing with the outcome. While a dispute is open, we keep the review visible unless it’s a clear breach of our rules.

The legal framework behind this policy

This policy follows the EU and Spanish rules on consumer reviews, in force since 28 May 2022:

• The Omnibus Directive, Directive (EU) 2019/2161, added publishing or commissioning fake reviews — and showing reviews without taking reasonable steps to check they come from real consumers — to the EU’s blacklist of unfair commercial practices.
• Real Decreto-ley 24/2021 transposed that directive into Spanish law by amending the Texto Refundido de la Ley General para la Defensa de los Consumidores y Usuarios (TRLGDCU) — Spain’s consolidated consumer protection act.
• Article 20 TRLGDCU requires any business that gives access to consumer reviews to state whether it guarantees they come from people who actually used or bought the product or service, and how it processes them.
• Article 47 TRLGDCU sets out the infringement and penalty regime for consumer protection, including failures to meet those disclosure duties.

That’s why every CercaClaro review carries a visible provenance label — it’s how we actually meet that disclosure duty, not just a line on this page.

A system still rolling out

CercaClaro is switching on reviews gradually as we verify businesses, starting with Madrid. You may well come across listings with no reviews yet, or only a handful — that’s not a mark against the business, it just means the system hasn’t reached that category or city yet. Coverage will grow as more professionals get verified and more genuine leads come in through search and the services pages.

If something in a review looks wrong or unfair to you, the quickest route is our corrections page. If you’d like to know how we vet professionals before they can receive reviews at all, see verification.