G2 puts logic in place to ensure the reviews shown on product pages are the most helpful to buyers. When the page is sorted by default, the sort is calculated with a custom algorithm that includes the following data points.
The G2 Star Rating is calculated by aggregating reviewers' answers to our Likely to Recommend question (1–10 scale) and dividing the average in half.
You will see half stars because the visual is rounded up to the nearest half.
The top alternatives sorting algorithm is meant to surface the products most similar in functionality and which buyers can leverage for similar uses. Three sources of information are used to determine the sort, as listed below:
This section describes the primary scoring components used for software and services listed on G2.
G2 uses two proprietary scoring components—Satisfaction and Market Presence—to determine the overall G2 score and Grid® placement.
ℹ️ Satisfaction is normalized across each category and market segment, meaning that scores are relative and might differ between categories and segments.
The G2 review form contains several touchpoints for assessing general customer satisfaction (Likelihood to Recommend, Direction of Product), end-user focused attributes (Ease of Use, Meets Requirements, Quality of Support), and administration-specific attributes (Ease of Admin, Ease of Setup, Ease of Doing Business With).
To assess popularity and statistical significance, review response data is weighted based on the total number of reviews.
Reviews that are more thoroughly completed are weighted more heavily. Each review is assigned a Readability Score using the Flesch Reading Ease scale.
Because recent reviews are more relevant to buyers, older reviews are weighted less. For more information, refer to the Review Decay section.
Reviews collected from current product users or from users who have more experience with the product are given increased weight. Reviews solicited without incentive are also weighted more heavily.
ℹ️ Per the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines, sellers should not segment customers to solicit only positive reviews. Any reviews obtained via segmentation are in violation of G2’s Community Guidelines and are subject to removal.
G2's Market Presence score incorporates 18 metrics derived from G2's user reviews and third-party sources. Market Presence is based on data for both products and their corresponding sellers, with increased weight given to product-specific metrics.
ℹ️ Market Presence is normalized across each category and market segment, meaning that scores are relative and might differ between categories and segments.
The following table describes several key factors influencing G2’s Market Presence score, listed in order of importance.
|
CRITERIA |
METRICS |
DESCRIPTION |
IMPORTANCE |
|
Review Count |
Weighted Review Count by Category |
The number of non-business partner reviews attributed to the category.
|
High |
|
Employee Count & Revenue ℹ️ G2 uses the seller’s total number of employees and revenue, as well as an estimate of employee count and revenue at the product- and category-level to account for sellers who have multiple products or products in multiple categories. |
Employees on ZoomInfo |
The number of employees reported by ZoomInfo, represented as a range. |
High |
|
Employees on LinkedIn |
The number of employees reported by LinkedIn. |
High |
|
|
Employees on Crunchbase |
The number of employees reported by Crunchbase, represented as a range |
Medium |
|
|
Revenue on ZoomInfo |
The estimated B2B software revenue reported by ZoomInfo. |
Medium |
|
|
Web Presence |
Moz Product Page Authority |
How well the product’s webpage will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs), predicted by Moz Product Page Authority. |
Medium |
|
Estimated Search Volume |
The estimated volume for seller-branded search terms based on data from STAT Search Analytics and other sources. |
Medium |
|
|
SEMrush Total Traffic |
The sum of organic and adwords traffic, reported by SEMrush (US database only). |
Medium |
|
|
Moz Seller Domain Authority |
How well the seller’s website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs), predicted by Moz Domain Page Authority. |
Medium |
|
|
Spyfu Traffic Budget |
The estimated advertising spend for the seller’s paid search keywords, as reported by Spyfu (US database only). |
Low |
|
|
SEMrush Traffic Quality |
The monetary value of organic traffic to the seller's website, divided by the number of keywords tracked by SEMrush for the website (US database only). |
Low |
|
|
Growth, Influence, and Engagement |
Crunchbase Rank |
The Crunchbase rank for the seller. Crunchbase ranks organizations on several variables, including total funding amount, relationship with other organizations, and pageviews. |
Low |
|
Vendor Employee Growth |
The change in employee count since the last time company size was verified on LinkedIn, normalized by company size. |
Low |
|
|
Twitter Product Followers |
The number of followers for a product's primary Twitter handle (if available). |
Low |
|
|
Twitter Seller Followers |
The number of followers for a seller's primary Twitter handle (if available). |
Low |
|
|
Glassdoor Rating |
The seller’s employee satisfaction rating on Glassdoor (if available) |
Low |
|
|
Year Founded |
The year the seller company was founded. Sellers who have been in business longer are weighted more positively. |
Low |
G2 uses two proprietary scoring components—Satisfaction and Market Presence/Proficiency—to determine the overall G2 score and Grid® placement.
This section describes the primary factors influencing G2’s Satisfaction score for service providers.
ℹ️ Satisfaction is normalized across each category and market segment, meaning that scores are relative and might differ between categories and segments.
G2’s service provider review form contains a distinct set of service-focused attributes that assess the provider-client relationship, including Professionalism, Expertise of Team, Responsiveness, Execution Ability, and Communication Skills.
Because recent reviews are more relevant to buyers, older reviews are weighted less. For more information, refer to the Review Decay section.
Reviews that are more-thoroughly completed are weighted more heavily. Each review is assigned a Readability Score using the Flesch Reading Ease scale.
G2's Market Presence score for service providers incorporates five metrics that assess a service provider’s proficiency, experience, and reach.
ℹ️ Market Presence/Proficiency is normalized across each category and market segment, meaning that scores are relative and might differ between categories and segments
|
CRITERIA |
METRICS |
DESCRIPTION |
IMPORTANCE |
|
Capabilities and Competencies |
Category Expertise |
The number of distinct software competencies associated with an ecosystem service provider, as verified by G2’s Market Research team. ℹ️ This metric is only used for child categories of the Ecosystem Service Providers parent category. |
High |
|
Company Age |
Year Founded |
The year the company was founded. Service providers who have been in business longer are weighted more positively. |
Medium |
|
Geographic Diversity |
Reviewer Countries |
The number of unique countries represented among a provider’s reviewers. |
Medium |
|
Operating Countries |
The number of countries where a provider conducts business, as reported by ZoomInfo. |
Medium |
|
|
Languages |
The number of languages supported by a service provider, as reported by the provider. |
Low |
For a software or service category to be eligible for a Grid® Report, it must have:
To ensure that Satisfaction and Market Presence scoring maintains relevance to buyers at any point in time, G2 applies a decay to reviews as they age. Decay begins the moment a review is submitted or updated, and recalculates daily.
Specifically, a review decays gradually for the first 90 days and maintains a stronger weight for the first 18 months, after which the rate of decay accelerates. After about three years, the review reaches approximately 3% of its original weight and maintains that weight in perpetuity.
To be included in one of G2’s Software Companies or Software Products “Best Of” lists, a software company or software product must receive at least 50 approved and published reviews* during the evaluation period. For the “Best Of” lists, the evaluation period is January 1 to December 31 each year**, and scores reflect only data from reviews submitted during that time. The Market Presence score reflects the data that is as recent as the cut date.
Best Software Company Lists
Best Software Products Lists
Notes on the "Best Of" Scoring Methodologies:
Keep in mind that, for G2’s annual “Best Of” lists, the scores only reflect reviews submitted in the evaluation period. Other G2 reports might include more or less data which would potentially show different rankings for software companies and software products.
Also, broadly-defined “Other” categories such as “Other Marketing Software” and “Other IT Security Software” were excluded to ensure we were evaluating products with relevant comparative scoring.
* Business partner reviews count toward the 50 reviews threshold needed to be eligible for G2’s “Best Of” lists, but they are not calculated as part of the rankings.
** The 2020 “Best Of” list evaluation period was extended and ran through March of 2020, instead of the usual end date of December 31, 2019.
*** Competitiveness, in this instance, is determined by how many products are competing in each category and how many reviews those products receive.
v2.0
Users who have a business relationship with a vendor, such as resellers, can often provide valuable insight and are not restricted from leaving reviews on G2. However, because of the potential bias of such relationships, business partner reviews do not count toward the Star Rating, G2 score, Satisfaction or Market Presence scores, Best Of Lists, or other G2 ranking algorithms. These are flagged with a "Business Partner" label on the review.
When viewing Grids® by segment size, the same Grid® scoring methodology applies. However, the review data used is only from reviewers who are employed by a company within a particular company segment. G2 uses the following definitions for company segments:
Segmented Market Presence scores measure both the scale of a product within a category as well as the degree to which the product focuses on a given segment.
G2 rates products and vendors based on reviews gathered from our user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. We apply unique algorithms (v4.0) to this data to calculate the Satisfaction and Market Presence scores in real time.
When viewing categories by region or specific country, the same Satisfaction scoring methodology applies. However, the review data used is only from reviews sourced from a particular region or specific country. Review region is determined by where the reviewer was located when the review was written.
Regional Market Presence is designed to measure a product’s market share, vendor size, and web presence both within the region and globally. G2 uses a combination of over 15 metrics from G2’s reviews, publicly available information, and third-party sources to ensure the scoring is not only accurate but transparent, scalable, and dynamic.
G2 uses the following definitions for regions:
G2 rates products and vendors based on reviews gathered from our user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. We apply a unique, patent-pending algorithm to this data to calculate the product's Usability score. The information shown reflects scores calculated using the G2 usability algorithm v1.0 BETA in real time.
The Usability score is affected by the following (in order of importance):
For a category to be data ready for a Usability Index Report, it requires:
G2 rates products and vendors based on reviews gathered from our user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. We apply a unique, patent-pending algorithm to this data to calculate the product's Results score. The information shown reflects scores calculated using the G2 results algorithm v1.0 BETA in real time.
The Results score is affected by the following (in order of importance):
For a category to be data ready for a Results Index Report, it requires:
G2 rates products and vendors based on reviews gathered from our user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. We apply a unique, patent-pending algorithm to this data to calculate the product's Implementation score. The information shown reflects scores calculated using the G2 implementation algorithm v1.0 BETA in real time.
The Implementation score is affected by the following (in order of importance):
For a category to be data ready for a Implementation Index Report, it requires:
G2 rates products and vendors based on reviews gathered from our user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. We apply a unique, patent-pending algorithm to this data to calculate the product's Relationship score. The information shown reflects scores calculated using the G2 relationship algorithm v1.0 BETA in real time.
The Relationship score is affected by the following (in order of importance):
For a category to be data ready for a Relationship Index Report, it requires:
Momentum Methodology
Each variable is normalized by category and aggregated to create a Momentum score. The inputs impacting G2's Momentum score are as follows:
Satisfaction Methodology
The Satisfaction rating is affected by the following (in order of importance):
Product suites are combinations of products from a single vendor that may offer an advantage to businesses through an expanded range of features and functionality, prebuilt integrations, and simplified vendor relationships.
Product suite categories are identified by a grouping of G2 software categories, as described below:
Inclusion & Eligibility
To be included in a Grid®️, a product or product suite must have 10 or more reviews across the defined core categories. An eligible solution’s positioning will be further influenced by supplementary categories where it has 10 or more reviews.
Satisfaction
The suite Satisfaction score is an aggregate of the offering’s category Satisfaction scores, with core categories receiving greater weight than supplementary categories. The factors used in the calculation of suite Satisfaction scores are the same as those in the G2 Satisfaction score.
Note: The satisfaction sub-scores are normalized for each Grid®️, meaning the scores are relative. For core categories, the scores are normalized against only the solutions eligible for the Grid®️. For supplementary categories, the scores are normalized against all products with 10 reviews in the category.
Market Presence
Market Presence is designed to measure a suite’s market share, vendor size, and influence in the suite category. Suite Market Presence is based on the same factors used to score Market Presence, aggregated across each product that makes up the suite and has 10 reviews in a suite category.
Updates to your product or company information displayed in published G2 reports must be submitted to our support team. Our team can make changes to the following in published reports:
The following metrics are used in our Market Presence scoring and cannot be updated in published reports or drafts:
All updates to metrics affecting our Market Presence and Momentum algorithms are updated on a monthly basis. Vendors are updated at the same time to ensure that they are being measured on an even playing field. We do these updates ahead of report releases, so it is possible for metrics like the Number of Employees, Twitter followers, etc., to be a bit lower than what you might find at the source. If you have any questions, contact our support team.
Pros and Cons highlights the strengths and weaknesses of products relative to their category.
Five Pros and five Cons are identified for each G2 category based on all reviews within the category from the past 18 months.
ℹ️ Pros and Cons are updated every 30 days on the 15th of the month and are manually reviewed by G2 for quality assurance.
Pros and Cons are assigned to a product based on semantic similarity to at least one of their reviews. For each Pro or Con, G2 reports the total number of associated product reviews.
ℹ️ Selecting a Pro or Con shows the associated reviews.
If a product is in multiple G2 categories, the top five Pros and Cons, based on the highest number of associated reviews, across all categories will be displayed.
Eligibility
All text-based product reviews, including relevant product suite reviews, are considered for Pros and Cons. Video reviews and business partner reviews are not included in the analysis.
Review Thresholds & Data Management
Revised reviews, products added or removed from categories, and net-new/updated themes are included in the data refresh cycle that occurs on the 15th of every month.