The 4.74 Ceiling. Why Almost Every US Local Business on Google Rates Above 4.5.
Summary
- Average rating across 13,859 US local business profiles: 4.74. The distribution is heavily right-skewed, meaning ratings pile up near 5.0 with a long thin tail below 4.0.
- 60% of profiles rate 4.9 or 5.0. 16% rate 4.7 to 4.89. Only 4% rate below 4.0.
- 4.9 is the competitive ceiling, not the exceptional ceiling. A 4.7 rating is below median in most Tier Special verticals.
- Day care is the one major exception. Average 4.43, with 17% rating below 4.0, the highest low-end tail in our sample.
Headline
Of 13,859 US local business profiles we analyzed
4.74
is the average Google Business Profile rating in our sample. 60% of profiles rate 4.9 or higher. Ratings below 4.0 are genuinely rare.
The distribution is right-skewed, not normal. Mean 4.74. Most common rating 5.0.
Rating distribution
Rough share of profiles by rating bucket
60%
rate 4.9 to 5.0
- Rate 4.9 to 5.060%
- Rate 4.7 to 4.8916%
- Rate 4.5 to 4.699%
- Rate below 4.515%
Finding 1
Ratings pile up near 5.0. Below 4.0 is rare.
The rating distribution in our sample is not shaped like a bell curve. It is shaped like a cliff at 5.0, sloping down toward 4.0, with a tiny tail below that. 6,900 profiles (60%) sit at 4.9 or 5.0. 1,845 (16%) sit at 4.7 to 4.89. Only 570 profiles (4%) rate below 4.0 across all verticals. 17% of profiles have no rating yet, meaning they have no reviews or too few for a rating to display.
Number of profiles in each rating bucket
Count of US profiles in our 13,859-profile sample by rating range
Finding 2
Yoga, med spa, and chiropractor lead the rating race.
Yoga studios (4.85), med spas (4.84), and chiropractors (4.84) cluster at the top of the rating list. These are also the verticals where customers are either choosing to be there (elective, high-satisfaction) or where the service produces fast relief (chiropractic). Day care sits at the bottom at 4.43, with the highest low-end tail: 17% of day care profiles rate below 4.0.
Average rating by vertical
Values cluster near the top of Google's 1 to 5 scale. The spread from 4.43 (Day Care) to 4.85 (Yoga) is small visually but large in the Google rating distribution. See the next chart for what that spread looks like when expressed as percentage of profiles rated 4.9 or higher.
Finding 3
Percentage above 4.9 varies by vertical by almost 3x.
Chiropractors (75.8%), med spas (74.3%), and yoga studios (71.3%) have about three quarters of their profiles rated 4.9 or higher. At the other end, veterinary (26.1%), wedding venues (30.6%), and day care (33.1%) sit much lower. The spread matters for benchmarking: a 4.8 rating in chiropractic is below average. The same 4.8 in veterinary is very strong.
Percentage of profiles rated 4.9 or higher, by vertical
Share of each vertical at the top of the rating distribution
Finding 4
A 4.7 rating is below median in most verticals.
The intuitive reading of a 4.7 star rating is excellent. In the US local business sample we analyzed, it is merely average. 43% of profiles in our sample rate higher than 4.7. In med spas and chiropractors, more than 74% rate higher. That is the ceiling effect: Google Business ratings compress at the top, so mid-90s percentages end up looking middling.
The practical read for owners: if your rating is 4.7, you are not ahead of the market. You are at roughly the 50th percentile. If you are running a service that competes on Google ratings, a 4.9 is the target, not 4.7.
Methodology
Sample. 13,859 US-based Google Business Profiles across nine Tier Special verticals, collected between December 1, 2025 and April 10, 2026. Concentrated in AZ, CA, FL, TN, NC, NV.
Rating source. The public star rating displayed on Google Maps at the time of our extraction. Google computes this rating from verified reviews on the profile; we do not modify it.
Buckets. Ratings grouped into bands: 4.9 to 5.0, 4.7 to 4.89, 4.5 to 4.69, 4.0 to 4.49, 3.5 to 3.99, 3.0 to 3.49, below 3.0, no rating (applies when a profile has zero or insufficient reviews).
What this doesn't tell us. Whether specific low-rated profiles are declining, whether the rating corresponds to actual service quality, or how Google's filtering algorithm shapes the distribution. It describes what shows on Google Maps, not necessarily what visitors or customers would give if asked fresh.
Honest limits. Rating inflation on Google is well-documented across the industry. Our sample confirms the pattern rather than explains it. A rating distribution shaped like ours is consistent with a combination of selection bias (happy customers review more), platform filtering (spam removal), and incentive-driven review solicitation.
Data freshness. Findings reflect the state of our sample as of the collection date in the header. Ratings, review counts, and rating distributions shift continuously as new reviews arrive. We do not re-verify figures after publication. Category-level averages are slower to drift than individual profile figures, but expect some movement over weeks and months.
What this means for business owners
If you are running a business and your rating is 4.8, the reflexive reaction is comfort. The data suggests the opposite: you are at roughly median in most Tier Special verticals, not ahead. Your competitors in med spa, chiro, or yoga are overwhelmingly at 4.9.
The lever is not to game the number. It is to drive the consistent experience that produces 4.9. That means more attention to the bottom 10% of customer experiences than the top 10%, because one 3-star review drags a stable 4.9 down more than ten 5-star reviews lift it.
The second lever is response. Google weights active profiles over silent ones for ranking signals, and responses to both positive and negative reviews are one of the cleanest public signals that a profile is managed.
Want to know where your rating sits in your specific category and metro?
Request a private auditFrequently asked
- Why is the average Google rating so high for local businesses?
- Selection bias. Happy customers review more often than unhappy ones. Most unhappy customers simply do not come back rather than leave a review. Google also filters reviews flagged as spam or policy-violating, which trims the low end. The result is a right-skewed distribution where a 4.7 rating looks average.
- If 60% of profiles rate 4.9 or higher, is that normal?
- Yes. Across the 13,859 US local business profiles we analyzed, 4.9 to 5.0 is the mode, not the exception. A 4.8 rating is at the 40th percentile. A 4.6 is at the 25th. Below 4.0 is rare, only 5% of the sample.
- What rating should I be aiming for?
- In our sample, a rating below 4.7 puts you in the bottom quarter. 4.9 is the competitive benchmark in most Tier Special verticals. Day care is the one exception where the ceiling sits lower, at around 4.4 average.
- Do bad reviews hurt more or less than good ones help?
- Mathematically, much more. Once a profile has 100 reviews, a single 1-star review moves the rating by 0.03 points if starting at 5.0. Climbing back requires roughly 30 new 5-star reviews to offset a single 1-star.
Cite this report
- APA
- InQik Research. (2026). The 4.74 Ceiling. InQik Insights. https://insights.inqik.com/reports/rating-ceiling-us-local-business-2026
- MLA
- InQik Research. "The 4.74 Ceiling." InQik Insights, April 2, 2026, https://insights.inqik.com/reports/rating-ceiling-us-local-business-2026.
- Chicago
- InQik Research. "The 4.74 Ceiling." InQik Insights. April 2, 2026. https://insights.inqik.com/reports/rating-ceiling-us-local-business-2026.
Download dataset
Aggregated data behind this report is available as a CSV. Free under CC BY 4.0. Attribution required.
Download CSV