always read the reviews. The numbers are basically only a start guide, never the decider.

Lost count of how many times you see something with 4/5 and all the bad reviews are people bitching about the store they bought it from, or had ridiculous expectations (eg: This lawn mower did not trim my trees as expected!!) while the 5/5 are all suspiciously uniform.....

My general rule of thumb is to run a search on what I'm considering with the word "CRAP" included. That gets you the truth

I take reviews on any site (especially Google/maps) with a huge grain of salt. I mostly only go straight to the negative reviews though. If they're all petty shit, then it's usually a good sign. I also like to see if the business/owner has responded. If they're posting snarky responses to negative reviews, then I'm inclined to think that this isn't a business that I want to deal with.

My first guess is that due to googles prompting for a review when you visit somewhere, more people leave reviews on google than other websites which are an intentional effort to seek out

Additionally, it's possible the business was really well liked for a while, but then sold, and because more people leave negative reviews than positive ones, only google had lots of positives (for the above reason) and all the negatives are being posted in more places?

Sounds like a long shot, but I've actually seen that happen. A fish and chippy local to me before I moved was absolutely loved by everyone and had 4.8 stars out of something like 500 reviews on google, but barely any reviews elsewhere. Then the lady who ran it sold to people who screwed it up in the pursuit of profit, and all of a sudden, every single new review being posted on google is negative, and reviews are popping up on other sites absolutely dissing the shop. Dozens of angry facebook posts, the whole works.

But there's of course the possibility that they're mostly fake reviews on Google. I actually had a 1 star review I left at a hotel be taken down last week, apparently the owner didnt like my 1 star and reported it. It was reinstated after an appeal though, so take that for what you will.

Google has been putting zero effort into policing reviews. Many locations get a handful of 5 star reviews before they even open! All you can do is flag them as "unhelpful" 😡

Or that Google is completely gamed by SEO “experts” who spam fake reviews for cents and thus make Google Reviews completely bollocks by overpowering any genuine reviews with paid glowing testimonials?

It's 100% this, fake reviews are everywhere online but particularly on Google Maps. There's an excellent YouTube channel called 'Fake Review Watch' that is dedicated to tracking and reporting suspicious review behaviour across many different platforms. Companies from all around the world will pay the same third party to generate fake reviews for them, so you end up with these very traceable patterns of Google users reviewing the same US West Coast dentist, Central US hardware store and Melbourne hairdresser or something along those lines. It's quite funny how blatant it is.