How many one-star reviews it takes to fall below 4.5, trade by trade
A rating of 4.5 or above feels safe. For 23,703 US local businesses in our data, we worked out how many new one-star reviews it would take to bring the displayed rating down to 4.4. For a typical business it is 15. For a typical funeral home or property manager it is 6.
Why the step below 4.5 matters
In most of these trades almost every business sits between 4.7 and 5.0. In 8 of the 11, the median business is rated 4.8 or higher. Against that background a 4.4 sits near the bottom of the list.
In AC repair, 93% of businesses with 20 or more reviews are rated above 4.5, so a 4.4 there is behind more than nine in ten competitors. Even among auto body shops, where ratings run lower, 72% are above 4.5.
How the arithmetic works
Google shows a rating to one decimal place, so a business drops to a displayed 4.4 when its average falls below 4.45. From each business's own star counts, we worked out the smallest number of new one-star reviews that would get it there, assuming nothing else changes.
Volume is what protects a rating. A business with 50 reviews averaging exactly 4.8 falls below 4.5 after 6 one-star reviews. With 200 reviews at the same average, it takes 21.
Know your number. Take your star counts from your profile, add one-star reviews one at a time, and see when the average drops below 4.45.
The number, trade by trade
We did this for every business in our data displayed at 4.5 or above: 23,703 of them. The median across all trades is 15 one-star reviews. 41% of businesses would fall after ten or fewer, and 27% after five or fewer.
The spread is wide. A typical funeral home or property manager falls after 6. A typical emergency plumber can absorb 23. And the median hides the most exposed: in most trades, the quarter of businesses with the fewest reviews to spare would fall after a handful.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| Trade | Median | Lowest quarter | Fall after 5 or fewer | Fall after 10 or fewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Funeral homes | 6 | 2 or fewer | 49% | 66% |
| Property managers | 6 | 2 or fewer | 50% | 67% |
| Auto body shops | 10 | 4 or fewer | 34% | 53% |
| Roofers | 10 | 4 or fewer | 34% | 53% |
| Locksmiths | 13 | 4 or fewer | 29% | 44% |
| Personal injury lawyers | 14 | 6 or fewer | 24% | 41% |
| Medical spas | 17 | 8 or fewer | 17% | 34% |
| Moving companies | 20 | 7 or fewer | 21% | 33% |
| AC repair | 21 | 6 or fewer | 24% | 35% |
| Emergency plumbers | 23 | 8 or fewer | 19% | 32% |
Fewer reviews, more exposure
The pattern follows review counts. The typical funeral home has 42 reviews, and 30% have fewer than 20. Property managers combine few reviews, a median of 77, with ratings that start lower, so 50% of those at 4.5 or above would fall after five or fewer.
If you run a smaller business, or work in a trade where reviews are scarce, your rating is more fragile than it looks. The fix is the same as for everyone: more reviews, from more of your customers.
Five one-star reviews is the scale of review extortion
Review extortion works at exactly this scale: a handful of one-star reviews arrive together, followed by a message offering to remove them for a fee. In our data, a burst of five would take 49% of funeral homes and 50% of property managers now at 4.5 or above below 4.5.
Google has a form for this: report negative review extortion scams on your Business Profile. Not every burst is extortion, though. A genuine bad week, a local news story or a staff change can bring several honest complaints at once, and those call for replies and fixes, not reports.
If a burst arrives with a demand for money, don't pay and don't reply to the demand. Keep screenshots and dates, and use Google's form. Google decides what happens to the reviews.
How to raise your number
- Ask every customer for a review, not only the ones you expect to be happy. Google's own tips to get more reviews suggest making it easy, for example with a short link, and Google's policies don't allow asking only happy customers.
- Keep the pace steady. Recent reviews are what customers see first, and a sudden batch after a long silence reads oddly to a customer.
- Answer every negative review, calmly and in your own words. A reply does not change your rating, but it changes how the next customer reads it.
- Fix what the complaints have in common. Every one-star review you prevent is one less between you and the next step down.
More from this study
- We read nearly 200,000 Google reviews, and this is what we found: what the reviews and the owners' replies say.
- We reviewed nearly 30,000 Google local businesses, and this is what we found: the whole study, from star ratings to market structure.
- All articles
How we did this
Axio-CRED, our own collector, searched Google Maps for 11 trades (for example, “locksmith in Denver CO”) in 50 US cities on 24 and 25 September 2026, and recorded the public Google Business listings each search returned, typically 60 to 120. That is the visible part of each market, not every business in it: 28,814 businesses in all. For each one we read the star counts Google shows and up to eight of the reviews Google shows first, with any owner replies: 190,953 reviews from 28,562 businesses. Ratings and counts are as displayed on those days. One of the 11 trades is included in the totals but not named in the charts.
Falls below 4.5 means the smallest number of added one-star reviews that brings the average, from the business's own per-star counts, under 4.45, which displays as 4.4. Only businesses displayed at 4.5 or above on the collection days are included. The lowest quarter is the 25th percentile.
- One snapshot, taken on 24 and 25 September 2026. Nothing here measures change over time.
- The calculation assumes no other reviews arrive and none are removed. In practice new five-star reviews raise the number and removals change it.
- US only: 11 trades in 50 cities. Other trades, places and smaller towns may look different.
- Google's own rounding and the rating it displays can differ slightly from an average worked out from star counts.
Patterns here are signals worth checking, not verdicts about any business or reviewer, and we name none of them.