Stars or No Stars on Google Maps

I was in Huntington Beach over the weekend looking for a yummy local Mexican food restaurant. I started on my iPhone, but I get no reviews or ratings information from Google Maps, so that wasn’t any help (hint hint Apple/Google!). We decided to ask a real live “local” resident, so we swung by the Hyatt resort and asked one of the guys out in front. He referred us to Mario’s Mexican Restaurant and it turned out to be a great choice. I was 1/3 through my chicken chimichanga and full to the brim!

As I go back and do some searches from a browser now, I noticed something interesting with certain listings showings stars for ratings and other listings not showing any stars. I started wth a regular search for mexican food near huntington beach, ca in Google, which only shows the number of reviews. After clicking on the map to be able to see more clearly where the restaurants were located, I noticed that some “ratings” stars appeared for only 5 of the 10 listings (the first 4 and then listing 8). I investigated further and compared a few features:

1) Number of reviews - The first four with ratings stars had 6 reviews, 9 reviews, 20 reviews, and 16 reviews respectively. At first thought, okay maybe the cut off is 5 or less reviews? Scrolling down the last of the star listings had 6 reviews but just above it a listing had 8 reviews. I also verified this with other search queries with other food types and city locales. Can’t be the number of reviews…

2) Spread of ratings with fewer reviews - My next thought was, okay maybe the listings with fewer reviews had more spread out ratings so Google thought it might be less accurate. Looking at the first listing with 6 reviews, they had 2 ratings of 1 star, 2 ratings of 4 stars, and 1 rating of 5 stars. Looking at other listings (and other food types and cities), this didn’t seem to be it either.

3) Number of Reviews with Star Ratings - I looked back and noticed that not all of the reviews in the listing with 8 reviews actually had ratings, in fact only 4 of them did. I looked at the listings with 6 reviews, and now noticed there were in fact only 5 reviews, but all of them had rating stars. Looking at several other listings in other food categories and cities, it looks like 5 reviews with ratings is the cut off! Eureka!

Rating Stars Google Maps

5 Reviews with Star Ratings = Stars Appear on Google Maps listings

The restaurant we ate at just so happens to be at 4 reviews, all with rating stars. I left my own review with rating stars and will be watching to see when the stars appear as a final test for my hypothesis!

UPDATE!

Just 10 minutes later, Google updated the search and now shows the star ratings for the restaurant I added a review for, proving my hypothesis! You need 5 ratings reviews to have your stars appear.

5 Reviews for Star Ratings to Appear

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Stars or No Stars on Google Maps”

Herb Newborg Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 10:22 am

Michael,

It seems that Google has done away with displaying stars in any of the 10 place “one box” listings. Are you still finding them displayed?

Michael D Jensen Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 3:52 pm

Herb, I haven’t seen them on there for a while if at all, I think it gets too busy to show them on there so they just show it when you click on the map. It seems that would be a great place for them but they might just take up too much horizontal room.

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