31.2% of perfect 5.0 ratings come from fewer than ten reviews

Short answer

18,286 of 51,127 Australian trade businesses measured here show a perfect 5.0 rating, and 31.2% of them have fewer than ten reviews behind it. A 5.0 is usually a statement about how few people have reviewed a business, not about how good it is. The median business in this directory has 53 reviews, so anything under about ten is thin enough that one review moves the average by half a star.

Star ratings are compressed into a range so narrow that they cannot separate businesses. Across the 50,654 Australian trade businesses here that carry a rating at all, the mean is 4.70 out of 5 and 85.6% sit at 4.4 or above. The visible difference between the best and the worst rated business you will look at today is therefore smaller than the difference one unhappy customer makes.

How many reviews are actually behind a rating

ReviewsBusinessesShare
No reviews at all4830.9%
1–4 reviews5,0299.8%
5–19 reviews8,00215.7%
20–49 reviews10,59020.7%
50–199 reviews20,21539.5%
200 or more6,80813.3%

10.8% of the directory has four reviews or fewer. For those businesses the rating is not a measurement of anything — it is one or two people's afternoon.

Why the perfect scores cluster at the bottom of the review counts

It is arithmetic, not conspiracy. A business with three five-star reviews shows 5.0. The same business, honestly excellent, shows 4.8 after forty reviews because one customer had a bad day. Sustaining a true 5.0 across hundreds of jobs is close to impossible, so a perfect score at volume is rare and a perfect score at low volume is ordinary.

Average rating by trade

Trades with at least 200 rated businesses, so the average means something. The spread across the whole table is 0.74 of a star — which is the point: it is not a way to choose a trade, and it is not a way to choose a business either.

TradeAverage ratingRated businesses
Photographers4.912,154
Driving Schools4.861,328
Painters4.861,009
Pest Controllers4.831,167
Electricians4.823,144
Arborists4.81770
Car Detailers4.80990
Plumbers4.792,794
Solar Installers4.741,369
Gardeners & Landscapers4.741,727
Tilers4.73505
Pet Groomers4.721,822
Cleaners4.723,207
Roofers4.721,076
Locksmiths4.69850
Heating & Cooling4.681,696
Garage Door Specialists4.68482
Removalists4.671,102
Mechanics4.6614,887
Builders4.615,094
Pool Services4.581,165
Fencing Contractors4.53846
Car Washes4.161,470

What to read instead

  • The number of reviews before the score. Two hundred reviews at 4.6 beats four at 5.0, every time.
  • Whether the negative reviews describe the same problem. One person who did not get a call back is noise; five people describing the same unfinished job is a finding.
  • Whether anything else about the business checks out — a confirmable ABN, a phone number that matches its own website, a site that actually responds. Those are facts a review cannot fake.

Every listing here shows which of those checks ran and which passed, and says so when a check never ran at all. 16.0% publish an ABN we could confirm; 59.4% of the 26,834 we could check list a phone number that matches their own website.

Common questions

Is a 5.0-star tradie better than a 4.6-star one?
Usually not. 31.2% of perfect 5.0 ratings in this dataset rest on fewer than ten reviews, while a 4.6 across hundreds is a much larger sample of a much more consistent business.
What is the average Google rating for an Australian tradie?
4.70 out of 5, across the 50,654 Australian trade businesses in this directory that carry a rating. The compression is the finding: 85.6% of them sit at 4.4 or above, so the number separates almost nobody.
How many reviews should a tradesperson have?
The median here is 53. Treat anything under ten as no measurement at all, and prefer volume over score when you are choosing between two businesses.

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