In most areas, this will simply show which restaurants are actively maintaining their Google Maps entry by having all negative reviews removed, which ones are putting some effort into fake reviews and which ones just don't care.
I would say the best places typically score low fours and have at least some one-star reviews written by seemingly deranged people.
One might think that caring about not having bad reviews corelates with caring about the quality of ones services, but I haven' t found this to be the case.
I've noticed the occasional incredibly bad business that gets bad reviews removed, but always wondered how they did it and how that works? A guess: they make some fake google accounts and report the review from multiple accounts?
There are companies that remove bad reviews as a service. The most popular way seems to contest that the user really was a customer, which forces Google to request a proof (e.g. a receipt). Most users either don't have the receipt anymore or don't care enough, so the review gets deleted.
> I would say the best places typically score low fours and have at least some one-star reviews written by seemingly deranged people.
It's heavily dependent on the area in my experience. In some places 4.3 restaurants are perfectly fine, in other it's at least 4.5. Which is why when I'm travelling I don't simply visit the first high-scoring restaurant but look closer at several ones to get a general idea of the scoring habits there.
I would say the best places typically score low fours and have at least some one-star reviews written by seemingly deranged people.
One might think that caring about not having bad reviews corelates with caring about the quality of ones services, but I haven' t found this to be the case.