Most tradespeople are rated 5.0. That's the problem.
We measured the Google rating of every rated business in this directory — 67,316 of them, snapshot taken 18 August 2026. The distribution below is why a star rating alone can't tell you who to hire, and why we rank the way we do.
The distribution
56.6% of rated businesses hold a perfect 5.0. 67.5% sit at 4.9 or above, and 86.4% at 4.5 or above. Fewer than one in twenty (4.7%) fall below 4.0. On a scale where nearly everyone is at the top, the top means very little.
Google ratings of the 67,316 listed businesses with at least one review. A further 4,483 listings have no reviews yet and no rating at all.
What a perfect score is usually made of
Of the 38,080 businesses rated exactly 5.0, 12,332 — 32.4% — rest on fewer than five reviews. Only 2,883 (7.6%) hold a perfect score across a hundred reviews or more.
That is the whole story of rating inflation in one pair of numbers. A 5.0 from three customers is three happy customers — a fine start, not a track record. A 5.0 from three hundred is remarkable, and rare. The median rated business here has 17 reviews, and 14,895 businesses (22.1%) are rated on four reviews or fewer — which is why every listing on this site shows the review count on the same fixed scale, never the stars alone.
Inflation by trade
Every trade with 800 or more rated listings, ordered by the share rated exactly 5.0. The median review count shows how thin the evidence usually is.
| Trade | Rated listings | Rated exactly 5.0 | Median reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| plastering | 1,015 | 80.9% | 7 |
| carpentry | 1,636 | 75.8% | 8 |
| pressure washing | 1,466 | 75.6% | 22 |
| rendering | 1,024 | 75.5% | 12 |
| interior designer | 1,893 | 74% | 10 |
| architect | 2,106 | 73.4% | 6 |
| painting and decorating | 1,982 | 72% | 13 |
| tree surgeon | 1,875 | 71.8% | 22 |
| bricklaying | 874 | 70.3% | 5 |
| handyman | 1,282 | 68.3% | 11 |
| extension builder | 1,750 | 66.5% | 9 |
| solar panels | 1,364 | 65.4% | 18 |
| pest control | 1,196 | 64.8% | 23 |
| carpet cleaning | 1,637 | 64% | 31 |
| stonework | 987 | 63.1% | 10 |
| drainage | 1,546 | 62.8% | 18 |
| landscaping | 1,777 | 61.8% | 13 |
| surveyor | 1,900 | 61.5% | 11 |
| cleaning services | 1,378 | 60.7% | 17 |
| locksmith | 1,459 | 60.2% | 53 |
| gas engineer | 2,554 | 59.4% | 38 |
| HVAC | 1,361 | 59.1% | 11 |
| demolition | 868 | 54.7% | 7 |
| scaffolding | 1,664 | 54.7% | 7 |
| garage doors | 1,083 | 54.3% | 19 |
| guttering | 1,617 | 54.2% | 21 |
| removals | 2,273 | 51.9% | 46 |
| roofing | 1,510 | 51.5% | 14 |
| electrical | 2,697 | 50.7% | 14 |
| paving | 1,968 | 48.6% | 17 |
| fencing | 1,448 | 47.4% | 15 |
| bathroom fitters | 1,202 | 47.3% | 20 |
| kitchen fitters | 1,804 | 46.8% | 21 |
| tiling | 2,104 | 46.5% | 21 |
| plumbing | 1,047 | 46.1% | 12 |
| insulation | 960 | 40.7% | 12 |
| skip hire | 1,321 | 37.1% | 18 |
| glazing | 2,521 | 35.4% | 30 |
| flooring | 2,300 | 31.5% | 37 |
| decking | 1,678 | 27.3% | 36 |
Read the two right-hand columns together: the trades with the most perfect scores are typically the ones with the fewest reviews per business. Where customers review often — gas engineers, carpet cleaners — perfection gets rarer, because more judgements means more chances to disappoint someone.
What we did about it
Two things. First, our published ranking formula weighs review volume, not stars alone — a 4.7 from 123 people outranks a 5.0 from 2, because it is the better bet.
Second, before taking this snapshot we removed 785listings that were never tradespeople at all — attractions, venues, retail chains and garden centres the original data collection had swept in. The most-reviewed “conservatory installer” in the directory was Kew Gardens; Canterbury Cathedral was in there too. Each removal is recorded, and the directory now counts 71,799businesses. We publish this because a directory that quietly fixes its data was quietly wrong first — and if you spot a listing that shouldn't be here, tell us: support@domifyr.com.
Method
Snapshot taken 18 August 2026across all active listings. Ratings and review counts are Google's, collected by Google from its own users; we display them unaltered and do not collect ratings of our own. Every figure on this page is a row count you can ask us to re-run. Largest genuine review count in the directory: 5,894. Mean rating of rated businesses: 4.78.