How the Meta Score is calculated

What MetaRevu does

We continuously index reviews of paddles, balls, shoes, apparel, accessories, and court gear from professional publications, niche review sites, verified purchasers, and community forums. For each product, we normalize those ratings onto a common scale, weight them by source credibility, and publish the result as the Meta Score alongside a link back to every source review we used.

Source credibility tiers

Not all reviews carry the same weight. A hands-on bench test from a professional reviewer who spends weeks with a paddle is a different signal from a one-line forum comment. We group sources into five tiers, each with a fixed weight applied to its normalized rating.

The Meta Score is a weighted average: Meta Score = Σ (normalized_rating × source_weight) / Σ source_weight

Rating normalization

Sources publish ratings in many formats. Before anything can be averaged, every rating is converted to a 0–100 scale using the same rules for every product.

• 5-star scale: (stars / 5) × 100
• 10-point scale: (points / 10) × 100
• 100-point scale: used directly
• Letter grade: A = 95, B = 85, C = 75, D = 65, F = 40
• No numeric rating: derived from sentiment — positive = 80, neutral = 60, negative = 30

Minimum review threshold

A single review is not a reliable signal. We require at least three source reviews before a product is assigned a Meta Score. Products below that threshold still appear on MetaRevu with their individual source reviews listed, but no composite score is shown until enough independent coverage exists.

Themes and sentiment

On top of the numeric score, we use Anthropic’s Claude API to extract recurring themes from the body of each review — for example, “power”, “spin”, “feel at the kitchen line”, or “durability” — and to classify each mention as positive, neutral, or negative. These themes drive the pros and cons shown on the product page and let you see at a glance what reviewers consistently agree and disagree about.

How often scores update

Our crawlers re-run daily. When a new review is ingested for a product, that product’s Meta Score is recomputed from the full set of reviews we hold. Scores can move in either direction as coverage deepens, and the source list on every product page reflects the current set of reviews feeding the calculation.

Editorial independence

MetaRevu is independent. No source, brand, or retailer pays for placement, inclusion, or a better Meta Score. We earn commission when a reader clicks through an affiliate link and makes a purchase, but those relationships have no input into how a product is scored, ranked, or described.