What is a star rating?

A star rating is the one-to-five average a review platform shows for a business. It is the single most visible number a potential customer sees, and because most platforms weight recent reviews more heavily, it reflects the last few months more than the whole history.

A perfect five is not the target most owners assume. A page with a flawless average and few reviews reads as either very new or curated, and a small number of critical reviews handled well is more persuasive than none at all.

Volume changes what the number means. Twelve reviews averaging 4.9 and four hundred averaging 4.6 are not the same claim, and customers read them differently even when they could not say why.