True Ratings

True Ratings shows you what a Google Maps place's rating would look like if reviews that were removed under defamation complaints had been counted. Google Maps now displays a banner on a place's Reviews tab when reviews have been removed because of defamation complaints — for example: "21 to 50 reviews removed due to defamation complaints." This is a relatively new feature in response to a long-running issue: under German defamation law, businesses can compel Google to remove negative reviews, sometimes including ones that were entirely truthful. As a result, the headline rating shown above the banner reflects only the surviving reviews, and tends to overstate how the business is rated by its actual customers. True Ratings adds a single, narrowly-scoped feature: when you hover over the headline rating on a place's Reviews tab, and a defamation-removal banner is present, a tooltip appears showing an adjusted rating range — what the rating would be if every removed review had been a 1-star. HOW IT WORKS Imagine a place with 4.8 stars across 441 reviews, and a banner saying "21 to 50 reviews removed due to defamation complaints." Hovering the rating shows: Adjusted: 4.4–4.6 Assumes 21–50 removed reviews were 1-star. Banner reported by Google due to defamation complaints. The range reflects the only uncertainty Google has given us: how many reviews were actually removed (somewhere between 21 and 50). The lower bound assumes the maximum (50 removed); the upper bound assumes the minimum (21 removed). The assumed star value is fixed at 1, which represents the worst case — we don't know what the removed reviews said, only that they triggered defamation complaints. The result is intentionally honest: a range rather than a fake-precise single number. BANNER FORMATS SUPPORTED Google uses several wordings depending on the count of removed reviews, and True Ratings recognises them all in both English and German: • Range: "21 to 50 reviews removed" / "21 bis 50 Bewertungen ... entfernt" • Spelled-out range: "Six to ten reviews removed" / "Sechs bis zehn Bewertungen ... entfernt" • Lower-bound: "Over 250 reviews removed" / "Über 250 Bewertungen ... entfernt" — the tooltip shows "Adjusted: ≤X" since we know at least 250 were removed but not how many • Singular: "One review removed" / "Eine Bewertung ... entfernt" — the tooltip shows a single adjusted value WHAT IT DOES NOT DO • It does not modify the rating Google displays. The "4.8" you see stays "4.8". The adjusted range appears only on hover. • It does not collect any data. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no network traffic of any kind. It does not send anything to any server, including ours. • It does not need any account, sign-up, or configuration. • It does not modify any other Google Maps surface. It only acts on the Reviews tab of a place's detail panel, and only when a defamation-removal banner is present. LANGUAGES The extension recognises both German and English Google Maps interfaces, including umlaut variants ("über", "fünf"). The tooltip is shown in the language matching the Maps UI. PERMISSIONS The extension requests one Chrome permission: storage. This is used solely to remember a single boolean — whether you have enabled or disabled the extension via its toolbar popup. No other permissions are requested. TOGGLE Click the toolbar icon to open a small popup with one switch: Enabled / Disabled (default: Enabled). Disabling the extension immediately removes any visible tooltip and stops new ones from appearing, on this and on every other open Maps tab, without a reload. METHODOLOGY AND LIMITATIONS True Ratings is deliberately cautious: the range it shows is the worst-case scenario given the information Google publishes. The actual removed reviews may not all have been 1-star, and the actual count may have been at the low end of Google's reported range. This is by design — overstating uncertainty is more honest than understating it. If you want Google's unmodified view, just do not hover, or switch the extension off. The extension reads only the public Reviews-tab DOM that Google has already rendered to your browser. It cannot access removed review content, nor any private information about the place or its reviewers — neither can your browser, and neither can we. WHY THIS EXISTS German defamation law has, over the past several years, allowed businesses to systematically remove negative reviews from Google Maps. Google's banner is a step toward transparency, but a banner is much harder to use than a number. True Ratings turns the banner into a number — or rather, an honest range — so people deciding where to eat, shop, or seek services have a clearer picture.