I hesitate to trust these rating sites when I see that some casinos are reviewed positively, but when you Google these sites
and you find MANY fraud reports on these sites on other social media platforms. It is literally a minefield to sort the good
from the bad these days. There are many rating sites that are owned and operated by these Casinos.
...I trust the
numbers.
They're literally compensated by the gambling sites to write favorable reviews about them, and there rewards can actually be rather large sums of money for review sites that get lots of traffic. I know because I used to write for blogs and websites that reviewed casinos, and one site paid me upwards of $100-200 for a single written review. I imagine the blog or website owner's keeping a very large sum to themselves as well.
If you're actually looking to confirm the legitimacy of a casino, Bitcointalk is a far better place than some compensated website to get information. Most searches for "(casino name) legit/scam" direct to threads on Bitcointalk anyways.
They also just earn a lot through referrals, so perhaps they're not actually being paid by casino owners all of the time.
If you can secure a spot for a high traffic keyword on Google, then you can expect hundreds of new referrals each day.
But yeah, the review website owner still has a great incentive to just push the sites which pay out the most to him.
Those might not be the sites which are best for you as a user. Most likely not actually, since those referrals payouts are ultimately paid for by the players.