Global research initiative
Business Trust Council
Benchmarking the trust signals that decide which businesses get chosen.
We measure review volume, rating, recency, response time and local search visibility across defined industries and regions, then publish the benchmarks in full. Free to read, sourced, and reproducible.
01
What we do
Most buying decisions in local services are made before contact. A prospective customer compares star rating, review count, review recency, owner responses and map placement, and shortlists from what those signals imply.
Business Trust Council measures those signals at industry level rather than business by business, and publishes the resulting benchmarks so owners, associations and journalists can see which industries and regions carry the widest trust gap.
We are a research body. Nothing is sold on this site, and no leads are collected here.
02
The benchmarks
State of Trust: Sydney 2026
A four-industry signal audit of 252 Sydney businesses: veterinary, cosmetic dentistry, medical spas and HVAC.
Read the report →Further regions and industries will be added as they are published.
Each report benchmarks a set of industries against each other and against overall trust indicators, using the same published Business Trust Score methodology every time, so findings are comparable across reports.
03 / On the record
“Trust equals consistency over time. There's no shortcut for either.”
“Half our customers have made their mind up about us before the phone rings. They've read the reviews, looked at the photos, and decided. Nobody's ever measured that properly, so I'm glad someone is.”
“We're a distribution business, so people assume none of this applies to us. It does. The suppliers buyers stick with are the ones who are visible and consistent, year in, year out. That's worth putting a number on.”
“Trust used to be a hunch. Now a customer can line you up against three competitors in about thirty seconds. If you don't know how you look in that comparison, you're guessing.”
04
Our mission
Business Trust Council exists to answer one question for any given industry or region: how big is the trust gap, and where is it worst?
BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey finds that 49% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. That is why the gap matters. Until it is measured industry by industry, however, trust remains a sentiment rather than a figure an operator can act on.
We publish benchmark research on the components of that gap, review volume, rating, recency, response time and local search visibility, across industries and regions worldwide.
This is not written from the outside. [Founder Name] and Simon Fadous are operators themselves, running Made in Italy and bringing backgrounds from Salesforce and Canva, and have seen at first hand what it costs to compete in an industry where trust signals are inconsistent.
Businesses wanting their own score benchmarked against these findings can get a Business Trust Score and audit from Review Optimiser. Business Trust Council does not carry out audits and receives no fee for them.