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When Is a 5 Star Review Not A 5 Star Review? | Local SEO Guide

The answer is when Google My Business is aggregating and averaging out your reviews. In Google My Business math these nine different 5 star reviews average out to a measly 4.9.

Google Math Fail

For a company that has ~2,000 Ph.Ds in it’s employee, has written one of the most sophisticated computer applications in human history and is closing in on releasing a self-driving car you’d think that they would be able accurately represent a review average.

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6 Response Comments

  • Mark Goho  October 23, 2014 at 8:58 am

    Slow news day? This has been like this forever and obviously indicates a more complicated algorithm at work that just =AVERAGE()

  • Dan Leibson  October 23, 2014 at 8:59 am

    If only more complicated were qualitatively better.

  • Linda Buquet  October 23, 2014 at 9:13 am

    Google takes other factors into account so 9 “5”s does not equal a 5 score.

    “Score calculation

    We calculate an overall rating based on user ratings and a variety of other signals to ensure that the overall score best reflects the quality of the establishment.”

    Google recently told us even if you have all 5 star reviews, you will seldom ever end up with a 5 Star score. But I have all 5 star reviews and my score is 5. However that’s because I don’t have any reviews anywhere else that could pull that score down I guess.

  • Joy Hawkins  October 28, 2014 at 8:01 am

    Have them get more reviews. In my experience the score gets dropped if you don’t have enough reviews.

  • Mike  November 4, 2014 at 9:29 pm

    Interesting! Google also collect information “feedback” from other local directories as well, such as YP, Manta, and specially city search, so if you have a 3 star review there that might reflect your overall rating.

  • Dan C  November 5, 2014 at 2:21 am

    Nobody is perfect! That’s the message.