There is one thing you will not find on my website: a large, prominently displayed Google rating, a reassuring 4.9 out of 5 before you have even read three lines, or an impressive review counter suggesting that a crowd is already waiting at the door. This is not an oversight, an SEO weakness, or an aesthetic whim. It is a choice. I simply do not wish to build my reputation around a public rating system, nor use it as a commercial argument on my own website.
In psychic work, that choice makes even more sense to me, because this profession does not exactly lend itself to the logic of rating a toaster. A consultation can touch on intimate, painful or complex subjects, often carrying a great deal of expectation and emotion. You may hear what you hoped for, but also what you feared. You may leave reassured, surprised, unsettled or simply thoughtful. And quite often, the full meaning of a consultation only becomes clear weeks or even months later. Reducing all of that to five stars may be convenient, but its ability to reflect the reality of the experience is, at best, rather limited.
Google reviews originally had something quite healthy about them. They allowed people to share an experience and gave others an idea of what to expect before choosing a professional. Nothing particularly troubling there. The problem is that reviews have gradually become much more than simple testimonials. They are now tools for visibility, credibility and sales. Faced with two practitioners, many people will naturally gravitate towards the one displaying 700 or 800 reviews rather than the one with 30 or 40, without necessarily asking who has been practising for twenty years, who has the stronger background, or who has genuinely worked with the greatest number of people.
Big numbers are reassuring. And we all have a rather touching weakness for them from time to time.
That is where the system starts to become more complicated. The moment an online reputation can fill a diary, it acquires economic value. And whenever something has economic value, someone eventually finds a way to sell it. The market for fake reviews has existed for years. It is not particularly difficult to find providers offering dozens, sometimes hundreds, of reviews, often staggered over time so that everything appears more natural. One hundred here, another hundred a few weeks later, a handful of enthusiastic comments, a variety of profiles, and suddenly a reputation gains considerable volume.
It may seem crude. It is also remarkably effective.
In psychic work, a profile covered in positive reviews immediately inspires confidence in someone looking for a practitioner they do not yet know. They see 4.9 out of 5, several hundred comments and what appears to be a thriving practice. The reasoning is simple: surely that many people cannot all be wrong. So they book. They then become a genuine client themselves. Perhaps they will leave a genuine review. The profile grows, attracts more people, and eventually fills a schedule in a perfectly real way.
That is perhaps one of the most interesting paradoxes of the whole system: an artificial reputation can create a very real clientele. In other words, you begin by buying the appearance of success, and sometimes that appearance eventually produces the success itself. In a profession where people talk rather a lot about synchronicity, one has to admire the concept.
The inevitable result is a kind of arms race. A practitioner who quietly gathers authentic testimonials over the years may appear less visible than another whose online reputation has grown at the speed of tropical bamboo. Fifty genuine reviews can suddenly look modest next to five hundred. Someone who never asks clients to leave a review may seem less popular than someone who systematically follows up after every consultation. And the practitioner who refuses to play the game altogether may even give the impression that nobody consults them at all.
The digital world has a peculiar ability to convince us that what is not displayed does not exist.
And in psychic work, that conclusion can be particularly misleading. Many people simply do not want the fact that they consult a psychic to be public knowledge. Some hold highly visible positions. Others are simply private. Some consider, quite reasonably, that their personal life has no business appearing beneath their first name and profile picture on the internet. Someone can consult the same practitioner for ten years, recommend them to their entire family, and never leave a single public comment. They will never increase a review count, yet they contribute to something that, in my view, matters far more: a reputation built over time.
There is also another side to public reviews, one that people are slightly less enthusiastic about discussing. They can become a very convenient place to vent frustration. A consultation does not always provide the answer someone hoped to hear. In psychic work, that is sometimes the entire point. A person may arrive convinced that an ex-partner will return, that a project will succeed, or that a particular situation will unfold exactly as they want it to. If the psychic says otherwise, disappointment can be very real. And today, disappointment has an extremely simple outlet: a public review.
The difficulty is that a negative rating does not always allow the reader to distinguish poor professional work from emotional frustration. The practitioner may indeed have been bad. They may have lacked seriousness, tact or competence. That happens, and it has to be acknowledged. But they may also have simply refused to confirm what the person wanted to hear. They may have set a boundary. They may have said no. They may have advised someone not to call an ex again, not to wait any longer, or not to cling to a situation that was going nowhere.
And sometimes honesty costs a star.
That is where the rating system becomes particularly problematic in a profession like mine. A psychic who begins thinking about their Google rating during a consultation is already slightly less free. They may be tempted to reassure rather than say what they perceive, to flatter rather than challenge, or to promise rather than qualify. When the priority becomes protecting a 4.9, the consultation risks turning into a customer-satisfaction exercise.
Picture the scene: a rather unpleasant intuition appears, the psychic hesitates, and then a small inner voice whispers, “Careful. She has a Google account.”
At that point, one might as well install a payment terminal and a satisfaction kiosk by the door.
There is also a more general weakness in public review systems: the reader rarely knows the full context behind what they are reading. A pseudonym may be enough to publish an opinion. The person reading it from the outside does not necessarily know whether the reviewer actually consulted, under what circumstances, on what date, or whether the account given is entirely accurate. That is the nature of an open system. It makes it easy for people to speak, which is a strength, but that same ease can also become a weakness.
Naturally, this leaves room for other forms of abuse. A malicious competitor can leave an unflattering comment, or ask someone else to do it. A friend or relative can shower a practitioner with praise. A particularly unhappy client can multiply complaints. An enthusiastic admirer can become slightly overzealous. Human nature remains human nature, even when you add a Gmail address.
And in a competitive field like psychic work, it would be rather naive to pretend jealousy does not exist. Practitioners are human beings, which is already enough to complicate matters. Some support one another, others ignore one another, and a few have a rather more combative understanding of competition. Leaving an anonymous one-star review is sometimes much easier than expressing a reasoned criticism openly and taking responsibility for it. This does not mean that every negative review comes from a jealous competitor. That would be ridiculous. But it would be equally naive to imagine that an open system is entirely immune to this kind of behaviour.
This is also what makes an average rating so deceptive. A 4.7 or a 4.9 looks almost scientific. The number is precise, so it feels authoritative. Yet that single figure may combine a genuinely loyal client, a frustrated person, a spontaneous review, a heavily encouraged recommendation, a purchased comment, a questionable account and several perfectly authentic experiences. The arithmetic may be correct. The data sometimes deserves a little more curiosity.
The general inflation of perfect ratings does not help either. After seeing 4.9s and 5 out of 5s everywhere, perfection has somehow become ordinary. We apparently live in a country where tradespeople, therapists, restaurants, agencies, coaches and psychics manage to satisfy 98 or 99 per cent of humanity every single day.
That is wonderful.
One would simply like to see the same statistics at family gatherings and condominium meetings.
Reality is inevitably more nuanced. No professional who works a great deal and has done so for many years can please absolutely everyone. A personality may appeal to one person and irritate another. A way of speaking may feel refreshingly direct to some and too blunt to others. A consultation may be remarkable for one person and fail to convince the next. That is normal. I would even go so far as to say that a reputation with absolutely no rough edges eventually starts to feel slightly less human.
I should also make one thing very clear: I do not believe that all Google reviews are fake. Far from it. Many professionals receive genuine reviews, maintain excellent ratings and do outstanding work. It would be absurd to dismiss the entire system simply because it can be manipulated. My point is different. We have attached so much commercial value to those stars that they have inevitably become vulnerable to manipulation, while continuing to treat them as though they were unquestionable proof.
It is precisely this obsession with social proof that I reject.
The people who consult me are, of course, perfectly free to share a testimonial if they wish. They can contact the Concierge and choose whether their words should be published or remain private. When someone takes the time to describe their experience and gives me permission to share it, I am genuinely pleased to feature it on the website. I see those words as testimonials, not as units designed to feed a counter.
After more than twenty years of consultations, I could obviously display a suitably spectacular four-figure number across the homepage. It would probably reassure some visitors and perhaps flatter the ego a little, which remains one of the most readily available fuels of our time.
I prefer to do without it.
A testimonial has something human about it. A counter can very quickly start to resemble a hunting trophy. I do not need to display that 1,000, 3,000 or 6,000 people have somehow validated my existence before someone new can decide whether they wish to speak with me. Those who want to share their experience are welcome to do so. Those who prefer to keep their consultation entirely private are just as welcome.
I believe far more in a reputation built slowly: a journey, a way of working, consistency, people who return, others who recommend you, and a presence that endures over the years. It may look less spectacular than an enormous number displayed next to five stars. But a career cannot be ordered in batches of one hundred.
Ultimately, that is my main criticism of the system. Reviews can be useful, but we ask far too much of them. We expect them to tell us who is competent, who is honest, who deserves our trust, who does good work and, sometimes, even who has talent.
Five stars have never carried so much responsibility.
So yes, look at reviews if they reassure you. Read them. Compare them. Above all, try to read between the lines. But also look at the person’s background, their way of speaking, their commitments, the boundaries they set, and what they promise — or deliberately refuse to promise.
In a profession that speaks so much about intuition, it would be rather ironic to end up asking Google to choose your psychic.
As for the stars, I still prefer them where they originally belonged.
In the sky. At least no one has managed to sell those in packs of a hundred.