We read nearly 200,000 Google reviews, and this is what we found
Our collector, Axio-CRED, read 190,953 Google reviews of 28,814 local businesses in 11 trades across 50 US cities, with the 111,350 replies their owners left. 16,927 of them were one- or two-star reviews, and we read those for what customers complain about. Here is what the reviews themselves say.
Nine in ten reviews are five stars
Google's star counts for the businesses we looked at add up to 10,026,521 reviews. 91.6% of them are five stars and 4.4% are one star. Two, three and four stars together make up just 4.1%. The middle of the scale barely exists.
The reviews Google shows first follow the same shape. Of the 190,953 we read, 16,927 are one or two stars: about one in 11. They are few, but they are the ones a careful customer goes looking for, and on a profile this positive each one stands out.
A near-perfect profile proves nothing on its own. A business that asks every customer for a review ends up with exactly this shape, because most customers of a decent business are happy.
Ratings this compressed mean small numbers decide a lot. Our study of the businesses themselves found that six one-star reviews can take a typical funeral home or property manager below 4.5.
What customers see first is mostly recent
Google shows reviews in its own order, not strictly by date, and the ones it shows first lean recent. Of the reviews we read, 69% were posted in the 12 months before we collected them, and 22% in the last 90 days. 19% were more than two years old. The oldest dates from 2010.
So the first page of reviews is a picture of the last year, not of a business's whole history. A run of good work shows up quickly. So does a bad month.
Keep the pace of reviews steady. A business that collected most of its reviews years ago is judged on the few recent ones, and so is a business whose recent reviews are complaints.
Owners answer praise more readily than criticism
58% of the reviews we read carry an owner reply. For one- and two-star reviews the share falls to 48%. 28% of businesses have no owner reply on any of the reviews Google shows first, and among businesses that show at least one negative review there, 45% leave at least one of them unanswered.
When owners do reply, they are quick. The median reply comes 1 day after the review, and 49% of replies arrive within a day.
The negative reviews are the ones a new customer reads most closely. A calm, specific reply under each of them does more for you than a thank-you under every five-star one.
Many replies are the same few words
We read 111,350 owner replies. 6.8% of them repeat another reply word for word, and the most common are short thank-yous.
| Reply | Times seen |
|---|---|
| Thank you! | 412 |
| Thank you | 349 |
| Thank you. | 75 |
| Thank you so much! | 71 |
| Thank you!! | 54 |
Next come stock lines, such as one that thanks the reviewer for a five-star rating, seen 65 times. 239 longer replies appear word for word on three or more different businesses, which points to shared reply tools or agencies. And 89 businesses give the same reply to every review Google shows.
A short thank-you under a five-star review is fine. Under a complaint, a copied reply reads as not listening. Write those in your own words, and never paste the same text twice.
What the one- and two-star reviews are about
We sorted the 16,927 negative reviews by what they mention, using English keywords. A review can mention several things. Communication, meaning slow answers, missed calls and not being kept informed, is the most mentioned theme in 6 of the 11 trades, and comes up in a third or more of negative reviews in 8.
The rest depends on the trade. Damage appears in 53% of negative reviews of moving companies. Price is the complaint for emergency plumbers, at 47%. Deposits and refunds come up in 22% of property managers' negative reviews, and insurance or claims in 32% of auto body shops'. Personal injury lawyers are rarely criticized on price (3.8%) and often on communication (45%).
Between 1.8% and 7.3% of negative reviews, depending on the trade, use the word “scam”, “rip-off” or “fraud”. That is the reviewer's word, not a finding: it records how the customer felt, not what happened.
Most complaints are about how a job was handled, not the work itself. That is the cheapest thing to fix, and a reply that answers the specific complaint shows the next customer you did.
Some reviewers turn up on several competitors
The reviews we read came from 189,484 reviewer accounts. 1,378 of them appear on two or more of the businesses in our data, and 202 reviewed two or more competing businesses, meaning the same trade in the same city, within a week.
21 accounts reviewed three or more competitors, and 17 of those gave every one of them five stars. 13 reviewed three or more competitors within a single day, on businesses that are not all one brand; 11 of those gave five stars each time.
Much of this has ordinary explanations. One account reviewed six key-cutting kiosks and small key shops in one city. Another wrote about several cemeteries in terms that suggest a supplier. People also collect several quotes before choosing, and some review every company they spoke to. None of it shows who wrote a review or why, and because we read at most eight reviews per business, the real counts are higher.
If a competitor's praise looks coordinated, look for patterns rather than single reviews: the same accounts, the same days, the same wording. That is what the Fake Review Audit reads for, and what Google's own reporting tools ask you to show. You file any report yourself, and Google decides.
Reviews that read like guesses are rare
Some reviews describe a business in hypothetical terms, “seems like” or “sounds like”, instead of describing a job done. People sometimes read that as a warning sign. In our data it is rare: 0.28% of the 169,746 five-star reviews we read, and only 4 businesses show two or more.
On its own it means very little. Some customers review a business after a phone call or a quote, before any work is done, and write about the impression they got. It is at most one detail among many, never evidence by itself.
More from this study
- 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.
Negative means one or two stars. Complaint themes come from keyword matching in English, and one review can match several. Reviewer accounts were used only to count overlap between businesses. Recency is measured from each review's date to the day we collected it.
- One snapshot, taken on 24 and 25 September 2026. Nothing here measures change over time.
- US only: 11 trades in 50 cities. Other trades, places and smaller towns may look different.
- Up to eight reviews per business, in the order Google shows them. Figures from the reviews describe what a searcher sees first, not every review.
- Counts show what a listing or a review says, not whether it is fair, true, or who wrote it.
Patterns here are signals worth checking, not verdicts about any business or reviewer, and we name none of them.