Obviously those ratings were paid. And are you still investing to ICOs? the days are now dead for that investment scheme so you shouldn't bet your money with those projects anymore. It's been known for a while that many ICO are dead and scam.
I don't know how much they paid for each of those reviews that's why when you have read a very good review, it doesn't mean that the project itself is really like that.
Same thought about the ICO reviews on ICO review websites, Most of them are paid as far as I know. It is based according to the threads and articles that I have read. It's also true that ICO today are not on the trend like the old times theirs a new way of investing in altcoins, IEO is far way better than ICO, Partnering on a exchange before launching a project can gain a trust from investor not worrying the exchange that they will trade after they got the coins from the crowdsale.
I participated in VTOS bounty last year. That bounty had good rating on ICObench
and other rating sites. Somewhere at the end of bounty they just disappeared, their Twitter account is still there, like their other accounts, but without any activities for almost a year.
After that I learned to not trust this sites, in a hard way. I agree that IEO's are much
safer for investors and for bounty hunters. At least they can't start IEO if exchange team
doesn't check them.