Public feedback is the star rating and written comment that a client and a freelancer or agency leave for each other when an Upwork contract ends, published on the work history of both profiles for anyone to read.
Upwork collects feedback from both parties when a contract is closed. The public part is a rating out of five across several criteria and a free-text comment. Upwork holds each side's feedback back until both have submitted, or until a period set by Upwork has passed, so that neither can see the other's words before writing their own; the Help Center calls this double-blind feedback. Once published it appears on the freelancer's or agency's work history and on the client's profile, and the recipient can post a public reply beneath it.
Public feedback is the most visible record of how a contract went, and prospective clients read it, but it is only a part of the Job Success Score. Upwork states that private feedback, which the freelancer never sees, also counts, and that contracts closed with no feedback at all can weigh on the score. A long run of glowing comments therefore does not guarantee a high JSS.
A client can change their feedback for a period after submitting it, and Upwork lets a freelancer ask for that; the rules and the period are set by Upwork and may change. Top Rated profiles have an additional feedback removal perk.
How Upwork Insights uses it
This term describes Upwork's own rules or product rather than a figure the index measures; the pages that do carry live figures are the stats and rate pages.