Take the same three kinds of business, a gym, a restaurant and a hair salon, and drop them into different American cities. Same standards, same effort, same slightly wobbly table by the window. You’d expect the reviews to come out roughly the same.
They don’t. Not remotely.
We read 126,936 Google reviews of gyms, restaurants and salons across 86 US cities and sorted every one by whether it contained a complaint. Then we lined the cities up. In Atlanta, more than a quarter of reviews had something to grumble about. In Miami, fewer than three in a hundred did. Same businesses. Ten times the complaining.
This isn’t a story about which city has the best gyms or the worst restaurants. It’s a story about the people writing the reviews. Some cities are simply harder to please than others, the gap is a lot bigger than you’d guess, and once you know your city’s baseline, your own reviews start making a lot more sense.
The League Table
To make it a fair fight, this table only includes cities where we had all three types of business and at least 1,000 written reviews. Ranked from toughest crowd to easiest.
| Rank | City | Reviews with a complaint | Average stars | One-star reviews | Reviews analysed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Atlanta | 27.8% | 3.99 | 17.8% | 2,004 |
| 2 | Portland | 23.3% | 4.39 | 8.2% | 1,408 |
| 3 | Baltimore | 16.2% | 4.56 | 4.8% | 2,227 |
| 4 | San Francisco | 11.6% | 4.59 | 5.8% | 5,338 |
| 5 | San Jose | 11.2% | 4.63 | 5.0% | 5,052 |
| 6 | Kansas City | 10.1% | 4.57 | 5.7% | 5,197 |
| 7 | Washington DC | 9.9% | 4.65 | 4.6% | 5,471 |
| 8 | Charlotte | 8.9% | 4.56 | 6.7% | 5,206 |
| 9 | San Diego | 8.6% | 4.77 | 2.9% | 3,762 |
| 10 | Austin | 6.9% | 4.70 | 4.8% | 5,548 |
| 11 | Indianapolis | 5.6% | 4.73 | 2.8% | 5,192 |
| 12 | Del Mar | 5.2% | 4.76 | 3.4% | 1,239 |
| 13 | Miami | 2.6% | 4.83 | 2.5% | 17,326 |
Atlanta is out on its own. Its reviewers hand out a complaint in 28% of reviews and an average of just under four stars, the only city in the table under four. And look at that one-star column: nearly one in five Atlanta reviews is a one-star. Portland is next, then a gap, then Baltimore. Down the bottom, Austin, Indianapolis and Miami are all under 7%, and Miami’s 2.6% comes off more than 17,000 reviews, so it isn’t a small-sample fluke.
It’s the City, Not One Bad Business
The obvious objection is that Atlanta just has worse gyms, or Miami just has better restaurants. We checked, because it would be a boring story otherwise.
| City | Gym reviews with a complaint | Restaurant reviews | Salon reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | 36.7% | 24.3% | 37.1% |
| Portland | 31.0% | 24.0% | 14.8% |
| Austin | 6.7% | 7.5% | 6.6% |
| Miami | 10.9% | 1.5% | 5.8% |
Atlanta’s reviewers are tough across all three sectors, spread over a dozen or more businesses in each. It isn’t one grim gym dragging the number down. It’s the crowd. Austin’s reviewers are easy-going across all three, at 7%, 8% and 7%, which is about as consistent as a number gets. Whatever the business is, the temperament holds.
The one place to be careful is Miami, and it’s worth being honest about because a journalist will spot it. Miami’s overall figure is dominated by restaurants, which make up 14,635 of its 17,326 reviews, and Miami’s diners are astonishingly happy: 1.5% complaint rate, off a huge sample. Its gym-goers, at 10.9%, are merely ordinary. So the fair way to say it is that Miami is the friendliest city in America to run a restaurant in, and a perfectly reasonable one to run a gym in. Atlanta is a tough room whatever you do.
Tough Cities Complain Differently
Here’s a wrinkle we didn’t expect. Being a tough crowd doesn’t look the same everywhere.
Atlanta’s toughness shows up as one-star reviews. Nearly 18% of its reviews are one star, three to four times the rate in most other cities. Atlanta reviewers who are unhappy don’t write a long, measured critique. They give it one star and move on.
Baltimore and Portland are tough in a different way. They write essays. The average Baltimore review runs to 270 characters and Portland’s to 265, the two longest in the country, against 137 in Miami. And they’re the two cities most likely to give five stars and still put a complaint in the text: about 5% of their five-star reviews carry a gripe, more than double Miami’s rate. Baltimore and Portland reviewers are the kind who love you and still have notes.
| City | Average review length (characters) | Five-star reviews that still complain |
|---|---|---|
| Baltimore | 270 | 5.1% |
| Portland | 265 | 4.9% |
| Atlanta | 227 | 3.6% |
| San Francisco | 211 | 2.7% |
| Austin | 186 | 2.0% |
| Indianapolis | 173 | 1.7% |
| Miami | 137 | 0.8% |
So there are really two kinds of demanding city. The blunt kind, where displeasure is a one-star and no explanation. And the thorough kind, where you’ll get five stars and three paragraphs on what could have been better. If you run a business, the second kind is far more useful to you, even if it stings more to read.
Where the REST of the Country Lands
Widening the net to any city with 500-plus reviews and at least two sectors adds fifteen more, and the pattern holds.
| City | Reviews with a complaint | Average stars |
|---|---|---|
| El Paso | 34.1% | 3.88 |
| Chicago | 22.9% | 4.29 |
| Milwaukee | 14.7% | 4.63 |
| Las Vegas | 13.8% | 4.53 |
| Columbus | 13.1% | 4.60 |
| Boston | 12.3% | 4.56 |
| New York | 11.4% | 4.69 |
| Dallas | 8.7% | 4.59 |
| Phoenix | 5.6% | 4.77 |
| Tampa | 4.7% | 4.76 |
| Nashville | 4.7% | 4.61 |
| Madison | 2.7% | 4.87 |
El Paso, on two sectors, is tougher still than Atlanta at 34%, the highest complaint rate anywhere in the study. Chicago sits with Portland in the demanding tier. Boston, New York and Las Vegas are all mid-table, more forgiving than their reputations suggest.
And the whole gentle end has a warm-weather feel to it: Phoenix, Tampa, Miami, Austin, San Diego, Nashville. Whether that’s the sunshine, or something about who moves there, or something else entirely, we can’t say from reviews alone. But it’s consistent enough to notice, and it’s the sort of thing a reader in Phoenix will enjoy being told.
What a Business Can Actually Do With This
Quite a lot, and none of it involves getting defensive.
If you run a business in Atlanta or Portland and your star rating sits a touch below a rival’s in Austin, that gap may be your city talking, not your service. A 4.3 in Atlanta is a different achievement from a 4.3 in Miami. An owner comparing themselves to a national average is comparing themselves to a crowd that doesn’t live where their customers do, and the national average is dragged upward by a lot of very cheerful Floridians.
If you’re in Miami or Indianapolis, enjoy it, but don’t relax. A generous crowd flatters everyone equally. That means a genuinely great business there has to work harder to stand out, because the reviews of the mediocre place round the corner look nearly as good as yours.
And if you’re in one of the essay-writing cities, Baltimore, Portland, San Francisco, read your four and five-star reviews properly. Those reviewers are doing you a favour. They’re telling you what to fix in a tone calm enough to actually act on, which is more than the one-star crowd will ever do.
Either way the advice is the same. Know your city’s baseline before you read your own reviews. The number on your listing only means something next to the number your neighbours are getting.
How We Did This
We collected public Google reviews for 1,286 restaurants, gyms and hair salons across 86 US cities, using each business’s most recent reviews rather than the ones Google chooses to show first, so the picture isn’t flattered by Google’s habit of leading with the nice ones. We read the 126,936 with written text and sorted each by whether it raised a complaint about anything. The headline table includes only cities where we had all three sectors and at least 1,000 written reviews. The wider table includes cities with at least 500 reviews across two or more sectors. Complaint figures are the share of a city’s written reviews that raised a complaint. Star averages and one-star shares are across the same reviews. Review length is the average character count of the written text. Full tables for every city are available on request.