Metacritic

Metacritic is an Internet website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. This gives a general idea of the general appeal of the product among reviewers and, to a smaller extent, the public.

Many review websites give a review grade out of five, out of ten, out of a hundred, or even an alphabetical score. Metacritic converts such a grade to a percentage. For reviews with no explicit scores, for instance, Amazon's reviews, Metacritic manually assesses the tone of the review before assigning a relevant grade. Metacritic also gives bias to the reviews of magazines such as the Rolling Stones, and hence reviews from these publications have a marginally greater influence on the average.

The site is being increasingly lauded by Internet users for putting reviews of independent or not as famous products alongside the so-called staples, and generally increasing awareness and appreciation of these products.