I found Google restaurant reviews in NYC to be generally very inflated. You'd think couple hundred reviews averaging out to be 4.6+ would mean pretty good experience, but I've learned to dial back my expectation.
Ratings are cultural as well. Compare to the traditional French scoring system where 19/20 was traditionally considered the highest attainable score as 20/20 was reserved for perfection (eg. something unattainable).[1]
I couldn't find a source for this but I once heard of an North American company which had opened some offices in northern Europe and used the same satisfaction survey across all offices. They were astonished to see satisfaction scores being so low in northern Europe so they launched an investigation into the matter. The result of the investigation was that satisfaction in the European offices was actually comparable if not higher than the North American offices, but culturally they would use a score like 3/5 to indicate that they had no complaints, reserving higher scores for when things were above and beyond great.
Someone with better Google-fu might be able to find a source because I probably got something wrong but I think that was the gist of the event.
Thanks for sharing. I wonder if Google should introduce option for users to view adjusted score. Meaning it would put higher weighting on users that have more balanced distribution of historical star ratings who have verified credential. I'm sure that may have some unintended consequences...
I couldn't find a source for this but I once heard of an North American company which had opened some offices in northern Europe and used the same satisfaction survey across all offices. They were astonished to see satisfaction scores being so low in northern Europe so they launched an investigation into the matter. The result of the investigation was that satisfaction in the European offices was actually comparable if not higher than the North American offices, but culturally they would use a score like 3/5 to indicate that they had no complaints, reserving higher scores for when things were above and beyond great.
Someone with better Google-fu might be able to find a source because I probably got something wrong but I think that was the gist of the event.
[1] https://astoldbydana.com/2014/11/11/grading-on-the-french-sy...