Ever stood in a beauty aisle holding two moisturisers, wondering which one is actually worth your money?
You could Google the ingredients. Search TikTok. Watch a dermatologist’s 17-minute YouTube review. Or you could point your phone at the product and let an app do the detective work.
The Guru Index app is a new free iPhone download designed for exactly that moment – when you’re standing in a shop with a skin care product in your hand and want to know what trusted beauty experts actually think about it.
Point your phone at the product, and the app scans the label, identifies it and brings up its Guru Score. One tap takes you to the full verdict. And, access to individual expert opinions, who said them, when they said them and a link to the original video.
Behind the app sits an index covering more than 4,600 skincare and beauty products from more than 1,000 brands. Those products have been assessed through more than 43,000 individual takes from 50 skin care experts. These include dermatologists, cosmetic chemists and estheticians.
And this isn’t simply another beauty rating system where everything gets reduced to a five-star score.
The Guru Score reflects how positively the experts have actually spoken about a product.
The system gives each expert one vote, with a strong recommendation carrying more weight than a lukewarm “it’s fine. But it’s pricey”. Products with more expert opinions also carry more weight than those with only a couple of reviews.
It also attempts to make the money and brand relationships behind online beauty advice more transparent.
Paid partnerships are identified as sponsored and those takes receive half weighting. If an expert is reviewing a brand they founded, that is also flagged and their opinion doesn’t contribute to the product’s score.
And when the experts disagree, the app doesn’t pretend they don’t.
The score sits in the middle.
That could be particularly useful in a beauty industry where the sheer volume of advice can be as overwhelming as the choice of products itself.
The Guru Index founder Shoshana Eilon (below) says the idea came from a simple frustration: the expert advice people want already exists, but it is scattered across thousands of hours of online content.
“That is the thing we built. Their expertise, in your pocket at the moment you actually need it.”
It means you don’t necessarily have to leave the shop, Google the product, search for a dermatologist’s opinion and then try to remember which video you watched before deciding whether to buy it.
The app brings the research to the shelf.
And because it is based on named and attributed expert commentary, you can see where the verdict comes from rather than simply being handed a mysterious algorithm-generated recommendation.
The Guru Index says it does not accept payment from brands for scores and is independent of the brands it covers. It also makes clear that it is not a medical service and its content is not medical advice.
For beauty shoppers, though, the appeal is pretty straightforward.
Your phone already helps you navigate to the shop, compare prices and photograph the skincare product you were about to buy.
Now it can potentially tell you what the experts think before you tap your card.
The Guru Index is free on iPhone and currently available in Australia.
