30.0% of perfect 5.0 ratings come from fewer than ten reviews

Short answer

23,189 of 65,117 Australian trade businesses measured here show a perfect 5.0 rating, and 30.0% 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 40 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 64,629 Australian trade businesses here that carry a rating at all, the mean is 4.68 out of 5 and 84.2% 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 all4880.7%
1–4 reviews6,1419.4%
5–19 reviews14,23221.9%
20–49 reviews16,47725.3%
50–199 reviews20,75131.9%
200 or more7,02810.8%

10.2% 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 0.73 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
Photographers4.902,446
Driving Schools4.841,511
Painters4.841,245
Pest Controllers4.821,368
Car Detailers4.811,242
Electricians4.803,844
Arborists4.79900
Plumbers4.763,448
Solar Installers4.741,506
Pet Groomers4.732,119
Cleaners4.713,802
Gardeners & Landscapers4.702,217
Tilers4.70617
Roofers4.681,336
Locksmiths4.68991
Removalists4.651,226
Mechanics4.6519,330
Garage Door Specialists4.64568
Heating & Cooling4.642,094
Builders4.608,889
Pool Services4.571,387
Fencing Contractors4.54991
Car Washes4.171,552

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. 19.1% publish an ABN we could confirm; 60.0% of the 31,767 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. 30.0% 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?
4.68 out of 5, across the 64,629 Australian trade businesses in this directory that carry a rating. The compression is the finding: 84.2% 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 40. 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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