- The Car Expert launches a game-changing ranking for new cars
- Ratings aggregated from 25 of the UK’s top motoring websites
- Invaluable market intelligence for car manufacturer
London, 7 October 2021: The Car Expert has this week unveiled its unique Expert Rating Index – the most powerful new car review and ranking platform ever seen in the UK. It’s designed to be the new gold standard for rating the best and worst new cars for consumers, and the ultimate brand performance barometer for car manufacturers.
The Expert Rating Index brings a level of sophistication never before seen in ranking the best and worst new cars in the UK. The Car Expert’s team compiles new car reviews from 25 of the UK’s top automotive sites, then applies an advanced algorithm to produce a definitive rating for each car.
It provides car manufacturers with unique market intelligence on how each media title is reporting on individual car brands and models, harnessing the combined weight of more than 8,500 new car reviews and increasing every week.
The index brings science and data analysis to the subjective and old-fashioned world of reviewing new cars, using established aggregating principles in a similar fashion to sites like Rotten Tomatoes – the world’s most famous review aggregator site – Metacritic and others.
Developed entirely within the UK but capable of being applied anywhere in the world, this is the first time that aggregated ratings technology has been used to publicly rate and rank new car reviews.
“After three years of research, development and public testing, the Expert Rating Index is now the most accurate and reliable method ever developed to rate new cars,” said Stuart Masson, editorial director of The Car Expert.
“It’s the new gold standard for ranking the best and worst new cars for both consumers and car manufacturers. Think of it as ‘the Rotten Tomatoes of car reviews’.”
The Car Expert will publish quarterly reports from the Expert Rating Index, the first of which is scheduled to be out by the end of October.
What’s an Expert Rating?
The Expert Rating score for a car is an aggregated rating made up of a number of individual review scores from up to 25 different sources. This can be as few as 12 reviews and in some cases is more than 60 (as some cars have multiple variants of engines, body styles and trim levels, or are simply more widely reviewed).
The Expert Rating Index factors in the age of each review, so that newer reviews carry more weight than older reviews. It also breaks down the complex web of different scoring systems that different websites use in their reviews.
All the data is pulled together with hundreds of calculations to produce a definitive score for each new car – the only number that you can trust.
Licensing
The Car Expert’s aggregated ratings technology is also available for licensing, either to power vehicle ratings on external sites or for internal analytical use. For example, Leasing.com, one of the UK’s top car leasing websites, is now using a custom algorithm and bespoke integration from The Car Expert to power its new car ratings.
ENDS
Note to editors
The Car Expert is the UK’s most comprehensive automotive consumer advice site. It has been providing independent, impartial advice to UK car buyers and car owners for 10 years.
Two million readers each year rely on The Car Expert for news, information and advice on every aspect of buying, financing, owning and selling their cars.
The Car Expert also provides expert advice to broadcast media in the UK and beyond, with editor Stuart Masson regularly appearing on TV and radio with the BBC and commercial stations.
