How many Google reviews do you need?
Real review counts from UK business listings, category by category and town by town, and a check of where yours sits. Updated September 2026.
Quick answer
Half of the 17 garages with premises in Cardiff have fewer than 133 Google reviews, half have more - the typical figure for that market - checked September 2026.
208 puts a garage ahead of two in three of them (the top third); 332 ahead of nine in ten (the top 10%). Five more reviews would move a garage sitting in the middle past 2 competitors.
Source: 17 public Google Business Profile listings for garages in Cardiff with a street address, read September 2026. Service-area listings with no address are excluded. No business is named on this page.
The middle, category by category
Every figure below is the middle of that category's own listings with premises. They are not versions of one national number; they are different markets.
| Category | With premises | Towns | Middle | Town by town |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Builders | 527 | 22 | 10 | 5 (Shrewsbury) to 28 (Bolton) |
| Roofers | 785 | 27 | 19 | 5 (Lincoln) to 100 (Glasgow) |
| Electricians | 826 | 32 | 21 | 7 (Shrewsbury) to 62 (Bristol) |
| Plumbers | 821 | 32 | 38 | 12 (Bicester) to 87 (Milton Keynes) |
| Garages | 1,051 | 40 | 84 | 43 (Lowestoft) to 201 (Glasgow) |
| Estate Agents | 972 | 39 | 132 | 48 (Shrewsbury) to 262 (Bristol) |
Your town's number
Pick your category and town. We publish a figure only where at least 15 businesses with premises were checked within the last 120 days; 192 markets meet that today, out of 5,020 businesses across 12 categories and 47 towns.
† at or within one of the 15-business floor: a true figure resting on the fewest businesses, and the most likely to move or be withdrawn at the next refresh.
Every town for one category, side by side: plumbers, electricians, roofers, builders, garages and estate agents.
How review counts are spread among garages in Cardiff
Solid bars mark the typical count for the market, and where the top third and the top 10% begin.
- under 100 (0%)
- 10 to 240 (0%)
- 25 to 492 (12%)
- 50 to 996 (35%)
- 100 to 249middle: 133 · top third from 2085 (29%)
- 250 or moretop 10% from 3324 (24%)
Half of the 17 garages with premises in Cardiff sit between 64 and 241 reviews, a spread of 177. Only 0% have fewer than 25 reviews, so Cardiff is a well-reviewed market and the middle is a real bar to clear. 53% have 100 or more, and the top three average 372: the head of the market is established and is not where five reviews change anything. The average is 166, above the middle (the mean against the median). For position, use the middle: it is where most of the market actually is. On rating, the middle garage here shows 4.9 stars and 88% are at 4.5 or above, which is why a rating alone rarely separates local businesses; the count does.
Where does your listing sit?
Type your business name and town. We find your Google listing and put its review count against the other garages in your town — free, two lookups a day per person, no sign-up.
Want to move up the ladder?
Five more reviews moves a garage in the middle of Cardiff past 2 competitors. DriveMoreReviews texts the customers you already have and sends each one to your Google listing.
Google review calculator: rating, not position
Most calculators answer one question: how many five-star reviews it takes to move your average. That arithmetic is below, and it is exact, because Google's displayed rating is a plain mean rounded to one decimal. What no calculator can tell you is whether the result changes where you appear next to the other garages in your town — that is what the chart above and the lookup are for.
40 more five-star reviews takes 40 reviews at 4.6 to 4.8.
One new 1-star review would move 4.6 to 4.51; it takes 9 five-star reviews to get back to 4.6.
The questions people ask
- How many 5 star reviews to cancel a 1 star?
- It depends on your average, not your count. To get back to the rating you had before one 1-star review, you need (rating − 1) ÷ (5 − rating) five-star reviews: at 4.6 that is 9, at 4.8 it is 19, at 4.9 it is 40. The higher your rating, the more a single 1-star costs to undo, because each 5-star can only add a smaller amount above your average.
- How many 5 star reviews do you need to go up on Google?
- Your rating and your position are different questions. To lift a displayed rating by 0.1, a business with 40 reviews at 4.6 needs 14 more five-star reviews; with 200 reviews it needs 67. To move up among garages in Cardiff, count matters more than rating: five more reviews takes a garage in the middle (133 reviews) past 2 of the 17 with premises there, because the middle of that market is bunched between 64 and 241 reviews.
- What is a good number of Google reviews?
- Good is relative to the businesses you appear next to. Among the 17 garages with premises in Cardiff, half have fewer than 133 - that is the typical count; 208 puts you ahead of two in three (the top third) and 332 ahead of nine in ten (the top 10%), checked September 2026. The most-reviewed garage there has 489; the top three average 372. A count above the middle of your town is good; above the top-third line is where a listing starts to stand out in the map results.
- How does Google calculate review scores?
- Google describes the displayed rating as an average of all the star ratings on the listing, shown to one decimal place; it publishes no weighting by age or length, and a rating left without any text counts the same as one with a review. Reviews Google removes as policy violations drop out of the average. Position in the map results is a separate calculation that Google does not publish; review count and rating are among its inputs, alongside distance and relevance.
- How do you calculate a 5 star rating?
- Add up every rating and divide by the number of reviews. Twelve five-stars and three four-stars is 72 ÷ 15 = 4.8. To find how many five-star reviews would take you from your current average A with n reviews to a target T, the formula is n × (T − A) ÷ (5 − T), rounded up. The calculator above does the arithmetic.
- Is 4.2 a good Google rating?
- Among garages in Cardiff, the middle rating is 4.9 and 88% of the 17 businesses with premises are rated 4.5 or higher (59% are 4.8 or higher). A 4.2 sits below most of that market, and because the average is a plain mean it takes a run of five-stars to move: 24 of them from 40 reviews to reach 4.5.
Where these numbers come from
For each trade and town we read the public Google Business Profile listings Google returns for that search — up to sixty — and keep only businesses with a street address in the town. Service-area listings with no address, suppliers and training providers, listings with fewer than three reviews, and businesses whose Google category is a different trade are all removed before anything is counted. A town is published only when at least 15 businesses survive that, and only while the figures are under 120 days old; a town whose figures go stale is withdrawn rather than shown as current. Every figure on this page carries its sample size and the month it was checked. We do not name businesses: the median, the spread and the count are the market; the names are not ours to publish.
Current view: 17 garages in Cardiff, checked September 2026. DriveMoreReviews is a review-request service for UK local businesses; these figures are published free and may be quoted with a link to this page.
Want to move up the ladder?
Five more reviews moves a garage in the middle of Cardiff past 2 competitors. DriveMoreReviews texts the customers you already have and sends each one to your Google listing.