How it works
A star average treats a review from 2015 the same as one from last week. The Legit rating doesn't, so it moves when a place changes.
The Legit rating
The Legit rating is a weighted average of a place's Google review ratings. Each review counts less the older it is: a review loses half its weight every 180 days, the half-life. A review from last month counts almost fully, one from a year ago counts about a quarter, and one from five years ago barely counts.
The average starts from a modest prior, the weight of about five middling reviews, so a place with only a handful of reviews doesn't swing to 5.0 or 1.0 on a single one. As reviews come in, the prior fades into the background.
The half-life
On a place page you can shorten or lengthen the half-life: about 3 months weights recent reviews more, about a year weights them less. The default is 6 months. A shorter half-life reacts faster and is noisier; a longer one is steadier and slower to notice a turn.
The band
The shaded band around the line is the likely range: where the true current rating probably sits, given how many recent reviews there are. It is wide when reviews are few or scattered and tight when they are many and agree. If a place doesn't have enough recent reviews to say anything firm, the page says so instead of drawing a confident line.
Google lifetime
The dashed line labeled “Google lifetime” is the average Google itself shows for the place: every review ever left, all weighted the same. Comparing it with the Legit rating line shows whether the place is doing better or worse than its long-run reputation.
Turning points and the sentence
The headline sentence comes from the line itself. When the rating shifted and stayed shifted, the page marks the turning point on the chart (“Turned down in March 2025”). Otherwise it says the place is steady or drifting, and by how much over the last 12 months. The Recent, 6 mo, 12 mo and 24 mo figures are how far the line has moved over each window.
Where the data comes from
Reviews are public Google reviews, collected through DataForSEO when someone first looks a place up and refreshed daily after that. For the rating, only the star rating and date are used; the text and reviewer details are kept privately and never shown here.
What isn't tracked
- Reviews Google has hidden or removed are not in the data, so they are not counted.
- Reviews that were edited after being posted are read as they stand when we collect them. Later edits and rating changes may be missed.
- Owner replies, photos and review text are not used.
More about the project is on the about page.