consumer-reviews
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SmartCustomer
SmartCustomer (formerly Sitejabber) is a San Francisco reviews platform that helps buyers spot trustworthy online businesses and helps businesses collect, manage, and surface authentic customer reviews. Born in 2007 out of a National Science Foundation grant to fight online fraud, it has grown into a two-sided marketplace of trust - said to have helped 200M+ buyers and gathered more than 25M reviews across 140K+ businesses - and now positions verified reviews as fuel for AEO/GEO visibility in AI answer engines like ChatGPT.
Michael Lai
Michael Lai is the CEO and co-founder of Sitejabber, a consumer review platform that has served more than 100 million shoppers and collected over 10 million reviews, and of SmartCustomer, an unbiased brand discovery tool launched in 2025. A Stanford computer scientist and Harvard MBA, he started Sitejabber in 2007 after a co-founder couldn't tell whether an online medical-equipment seller was a scam. His work sits at the intersection of consumer trust, transparency, and the messy fight against fake reviews and AI-generated content.