No Star Ratings. Learn Why.

We live in a world where 4-stars is a failing grade, so why bother? We’re all about supporting each other. Not dragging each other down. No stars because you’re all stars.

Okay okay….we don’t think we need to live in a “participation trophy” world for us to all do well, but the world of stars is broken. If you’ve ever gasped at a friend who gave a rideshare driver a 3-star rating, you understand. Star ratings rule who stands out on most directories. We promote community by scrapping the star scale.No

Your business shouldn’t suffer because your star team member had an off day, and the local grump happened to be their customer. While reviews can be helpful (we read plenty of them ourselves), the star scale leads businesses to focus on vanity metrics to prove they’re worthy of local attention. Businesses should be able to be found without committing to hours of extra work to maintain a perfect 5-star rating.

Here’s How We’re Different

We recognize the need to collect community feedback, but at the end of the day, most potential customers really just want any answer to one question: would you choose to go here again?

Local Gem Guide makes it easy for customers to answer with the click of a button. No account needed.

(Pro-Tip: while no account is needed to rate, creating one allows customers to save their favorite restaurants for later!)

We use several methods to eliminate abuse of this feature, including blocking abusive users and devices.

That’s just one way we’re different. The next is that we don’t show downvotes or reviews. Why? We are all about supporting local businesses, and that means helping them improve, too.

We let users downvote businesses, but we use downvotes and customer feedback to privately allow businesses owners to improve. We want them to have the opportunity to receive feedback in a manner that’s more productive than the traditional rating system.