Choosing your star threshold
Your threshold is the lowest star rating that still leads to your public review page. Trustaroo sets it to 4 for you. This page explains what changes when you move it, and why moving it up is riskier than it looks. Read time about four minutes.
What each setting actually does
| Threshold | Sent to your review page | Sent to private feedback |
|---|---|---|
| 3 stars | 3, 4, 5 | 1, 2 |
| 4 stars (default) | 4, 5 | 1, 2, 3 |
| 5 stars | 5 | 1, 2, 3, 4 |
That is the whole mechanic. The threshold does not change what customers are allowed to post publicly, and it does not change what you see: every rating lands in your dashboard either way.
Why 4 is the sensible default
Four stars is the point where most customers are genuinely satisfied but not delighted, and a 4 star public review is worth having. A profile made only of 5 star reviews reads as suspicious to customers and to platforms; a healthy mix of 4s and 5s reads as real.
Four also matches how people rate. Three stars usually means something specific went wrong, and that is exactly the message you want in a private feedback box where you can answer it.
When 3 stars is the better choice
- You have very few public reviews. Volume is the constraint early on, and 3 star reviews with a fair explanation still help you.
- Your category rates harshly. In some trades a satisfied customer routinely gives 3 stars.
- You reply publicly and well. A good public reply to a 3 star review demonstrates more than a wall of 5s does.
Why raising it to 5 is a bad trade
Setting the threshold to 5 means every 4 star customer, who liked you, is diverted away from your review page. You lose real reviews you would have been happy to have, and your public rating grows more slowly.
Google's policies prohibit selectively soliciting reviews only from customers you expect to be positive. A threshold that only lets perfect scores through is the clearest example of that pattern, and it puts your listing at risk. See Review filter and platform policies.
Change it in the right place
The account-wide value is Referral threshold on the Location Defaults panel of your business profile, set by selecting stars in the rating control. A single location overrides it with Redirect threshold in the location dialog, which takes a number from 1 to 5; leave that field empty to keep following the default. Both names refer to the same setting. See Location defaults and Per-location overrides.
If you move the threshold and rewrite your review page copy in the same week, you will not know which change moved your numbers. Give a threshold change at least a few weeks before judging it, using the 3 month view on your dashboard.
How to tell whether your threshold is right
Open your dashboard and look at two things together:
- The rating distribution. If a large share of your ratings sit exactly one star below your threshold, you are diverting a lot of reasonably happy customers. See Rating distribution.
- What the private feedback says. If most low ratings arrive with an empty or vague feedback box, they are not telling you anything the public reviews would not have. If they arrive with specific complaints, the routing is earning its keep. See Private feedback.
The combination you want is a modest share of ratings below the threshold, arriving with real detail, and a steady flow of referrals above it.
Set the same threshold everywhere unless you have a reason
Different thresholds per branch make your numbers hard to compare, because two branches will convert ratings into referrals at different rates by configuration rather than by performance. Vary the threshold only when the customer experience is genuinely different, such as a counter service compared with a full sit-down service, and write down why. See Multi-location setup.