Star Ratings Are Broken — Here's the Data

Bel-Fries Fast Food in New York has 4.6 stars on Google and 969 reviews. We gave it an F. Score of 56, food quality 5.2. It's a fry shop.

So we looked at the numbers

We built Seemor to analyze restaurants across 35+ dimensions, and when we compared our grades against Google's star ratings across 12,096 restaurants, the gap was bigger than we expected.

That 4.5–4.7 range is where most restaurants live on Google. It's also essentially a coin flip; only 29% earn A-grades from us, and 5.3% are actively mediocre. That's 376 restaurants Google says are great that simply aren't.

The overrated

These aren't edge cases. These are restaurants with hundreds or thousands of reviews that Google's system can't distinguish from genuinely excellent food.

Tim Hortons, London. 4.5 stars, 6,162 reviews. Seemor grade: D (score 67). It's a fast-food chain. Google thinks it's the same quality as hundreds of legitimately great London restaurants.

Globe Lounge, London. 4.9 stars, 1,162 reviews. Seemor grade: C- (score 72, food quality 6.3). Google's highest possible tier. Our second-lowest grade band.

Diner 24, New York. 4.8 stars, 5,987 reviews. Seemor grade: C- (score 72, food quality 6.2).

The hidden gems Google buries

Google doesn't just overrate mediocre restaurants. It buries great ones.

The Cross Keys, Chelsea. 4.3 stars on Google. Seemor grade: A (score 96, food quality 8.2). A genuinely excellent gastropub that Google's algorithm ranks below Tim Hortons.

Cafe Murano, Covent Garden. 4.3 stars. Seemor grade: A (score 94, food quality 8.3). Angela Hartnett's acclaimed Italian restaurant, essentially invisible in Google's rating system.

El Pastor, Soho. 4.3 stars. Seemor grade: A (score 94, food quality 8.2). One of London's best taquerias, buried because some diners complained about the wait.

These restaurants have 4.3 stars because Google treats a complaint about a 10-minute wait the same as a complaint about undercooked food.

Even "perfect" 5.0 stars is pretty noisy

We found 124 restaurants with a perfect 5.0 Google rating and 50+ reviews. Even within this supposedly perfect tier, Seemor scores span 22 points, from 81 (B-) to 103 (A+).

The weakest 5.0-star restaurants tend to be experience venues: board game cafes, cannabis-infused cafes, niche concept spots. Places that earn perfect scores for vibe and community, not food excellence. Google can't tell the difference.

The one that really got me

Google thinks Tim Hortons is a better restaurant than Gordon Ramsay. Tim Hortons: 4.5 stars. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, three Michelin stars: 4.4 stars. I'll let you sit with that for a moment.

Seemor gave Restaurant Gordon Ramsay an A- (score 91): "Exceptional service precision and outstanding food quality... inconsistent execution on select dishes and tight seating prevent a higher grade."

We gave Gordon Ramsay an A- and we can tell you exactly why it's not a full A: "inconsistent execution on select dishes and tight seating." That's useful information. You can decide if those things matter to you. A 4.4 star rating tells you nothing useful.

Why this happens

Star ratings collapse everything into one number. A diner who waited 20 minutes for a table gives 3 stars. A diner who loved every bite but found the bathroom small gives 4 stars. A diner whose friend celebrated a birthday there gives 5 stars regardless of the food.

The result is a system that compresses 35+ meaningful dimensions of restaurant quality into a single number between 4.2 and 4.8, a range so narrow it carries almost no information.

Our sample skews toward Google 4.4+ restaurants, which means the real picture is likely even more scattered below that threshold. But within the range most people actually use to make decisions, Google's stars are barely better than random.

Star ratings were designed for a world with limited information. That world is gone.