How many new five-star reviews would I need to bring a 3.5 average up to 4.0?

It depends on your total review count. At 3.5 with 20 reviews, you'd need roughly 10 new five-star reviews to reach 4.0. At 3.5 with 200 reviews, you'd need close to 100. The maths is the same either way: fewer existing reviews means each new one moves the needle faster.

Can I remove old negative reviews that are pulling my average down?

You can't remove reviews simply because they're old or negative. Google removes reviews only when they violate its policies — spam, fake, hate speech, or content from someone who never used your business. Genuine reviews stay. Consistently earning new positive ones is the only reliable strategy for improving your average.

Is there any way to suppress negative reviews from potential customers?

No — and any service claiming to bury or suppress reviews is using techniques that violate platform policies and likely Australian Consumer Law. The effective equivalent is replying well to negative reviews (so future readers see how you handle problems) and ensuring your positive reviews are recent and numerous enough that lower-rated ones are clearly the exception.

Google Reviews

How to Improve Your Google Star Rating (The Right Way)

Your average star rating shapes every first impression a new customer forms. Moving it up is achievable for almost any business — but only through genuine improvements and a consistent ask, not shortcuts that tend to backfire.

Updated 22 June 2026 · 6 min read

What your star rating actually measures

A Google star rating is the rolling average of every review your business has ever received. A single four-star review makes almost no difference on its own, but a steady flow of them compounds over time. That means improving your rating is a medium-term project, not a quick fix — and the direction of travel matters more than the current number.

The math also works in your favour if you're starting out: the fewer total reviews you have, the more each new one moves the needle. A business sitting at 3.5 from twenty reviews is far easier to shift than one at 3.5 from two hundred.

The two levers that genuinely work

There's no shortcut worth taking. The only durable path to a better star rating is:

Deliver better experiences — fix the things showing up repeatedly in your lower-rated reviews. If three reviews in a row mention slow service, that's a business problem, not a review problem.
Ask more customers for honest reviews — consistently, and not just the ones you expect to rate you highly.

Why asking everyone — not just happy customers — is important

Many businesses end up with more critical reviews than their overall quality deserves, simply because unhappy customers are more motivated to write. Actively asking your satisfied customers changes that ratio, and over time the average rises.

The critical word is 'everyone.' Funnelling only happy customers to Google while diverting dissatisfied ones to a private feedback form is called review gating. Google explicitly prohibits it, and it's inconsistent with Australian Consumer Law obligations around honest and accurate representations. Ask everyone, accept the honest mix, and let your replies do the work on the lower-rated ones.

A realistic sense of timeline

There's no formula that applies to every business — it depends on your current rating, the number of existing reviews, and how many you're generating each week. As a rough guide: if you're consistently earning a handful of genuine four-or-five-star reviews each week, you'll start to see the average move within a few months.

The businesses that improve fastest make asking a consistent habit: at the end of every job, every appointment, every delivery. It doesn't take many new reviews each week to compound meaningfully over a quarter.

What doesn't work — and why it makes things worse

Buying reviews or using services that promise to lift your rating. Fake reviews breach Google's policies and Australian Consumer Law. The ACCC has pursued enforcement action against businesses for false online testimonials.
Review gating — sending only satisfied customers to Google. Google prohibits it and it creates a misleading picture of your business.
Asking friends or staff to leave reviews from personal accounts. These are detected and removed; if enough are flagged, it can affect your whole profile.
Responding defensively to negative reviews. A combative reply can cost you more future customers than the review itself.
Flagging every negative review hoping it gets removed. Genuine reviews stay regardless of how negative they are — flagging is for policy violations only.

Replies do more than most people expect

Two businesses can have identical four-star averages, and one will consistently feel more trustworthy than the other — the one that replies. A thoughtful response to a three-star review, acknowledging the issue and explaining what changed, can do more for your reputation with a future customer than five silent four-stars sitting above it.

Replying also encourages future reviewers. When people see that the owner engages, they're more likely to leave their own review — knowing it won't disappear into silence.