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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1860 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 8, 2026

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Anyone else feel like Google maps reviews (and most other online review systems) have become totally worthless the last few years? It seems like every single place has overwhelmingly 5 star reviews, no matter how bad it is. I can't tell if it's bots, paid reviewers, or just a weird culture where people think they're "being nice" by leaving a 5 star review. Either way, i no longer trust them at all.

An acquaintance of mine was bilked out of a five-figure some by a shady contractor a few years ago. After fighting with him in court for two years, she finally agreed to settle. He returned a tenth of what he stole, and in exchange, he demanded that she change her one-star Google review to a five-star. I mentioned this story to a friend of mine who works in a related field, and he said he’s seen that same scenario play out several times before. There’s unfortunately just not much anyone can do to prevent such behavior.

They are still useful. However you must sort by "new" and not the default recommendation! This is a much more random sample. As always, the 2-4 star reviews are also very useful. The main thing I wish they would include is whether or not the place solicits reviews. This is doubly true for non-restaurant reviews, which are by far the lowest reliability.

Also, it's more useful to think of the reviews in "bands", or relative to others, rather than a point estimate. A 4.6 restaurant is going to be meaningfully better than a 4.1 restaurant nearly 100% of the time. But a 4.4 vs a 4.2? I wouldn't ever make a decision based mostly on that.

Reviews as a whole have become fairly useless due to bots and paid shills. Even forums like Buy it For Life have been seeing hints of bots posting to fluff a product.

The best way to wade through the grey sludge I've found is to focus on 4-star reviews, but we'll see how long that lasts.

The details in the 1-star reviews' text can sometimes be helpful; just ignore the ones where the reviewer's an idiot and see what legitimate complaints are left. But yeah, uncalibrated numeric ratings are worthless.

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