Tony Wang12 min readNevada Businesses Get 6x the Google Reviews of Vermont's. Mostly Because Vermont Has 4x More Businesses.
A US business averages 209 Google reviews in Nevada and 36 in Vermont. We tested tourism and migration, and both failed. The answer is the denominator.
Start with a number that looks like a story about American regional inequality. Take every US Google Maps business listing, group by state, and divide total reviews by listing count:
Nearly six to one. It would be easy to write that up as a digital-divide finding and move on. We tried to explain it instead, and the first two explanations both failed.
Hypothesis 1: it's tourism. It isn't.
Nevada and Hawaii are visitor economies; Vermont and North Dakota are not. Tourists leave reviews. Obvious.
The hypothesis is testable, because it makes a specific prediction: the gap should shrink or vanish in categories that visitors never use. Nobody flies to Las Vegas to get their teeth cleaned.
| Category | Nevada | Arizona | Hawaii | Vermont | Nevada ÷ Vermont |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hotel (visitor-facing) | 1,930.2 | 831.9 | 418.9 | 182.6 | 10.57x |
| Restaurant (visitor-facing) | 563.9 | 474.8 | 429.5 | 156.1 | 3.61x |
| Dentist (locals only) | 114.1 | 91.3 | 24.4 | 29.9 | 3.81x |
| Hair salon (locals only) | 123.9 | 95.8 | 48.4 | 42.9 | 2.89x |
| Auto repair (locals only) | 109.7 | 134.8 | 32.0 | 41.8 | 2.63x |
Nevada beats Vermont by 3.81x on dentists and 3.61x on restaurants. The supposedly tourism-driven gap is very slightly larger in the category tourists never touch. Hotels do show a 10.57x spread — tourism is obviously real — but it lives inside visitor-facing categories rather than lifting the state's general level.
Hawaii closes the case. It is one of the most heavily visited states in the country, and its restaurants (429.5) and hotels (418.9) look the part. Its dentists average 24.4 reviews — fewer than Vermont's 29.9. A visitor boom does nothing for the businesses visitors don't visit.
Hypothesis 2: it's newcomers. It isn't.
Second try, and a better one. Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Florida are high-growth destination states. Someone who just moved has no neighbour to ask for a dentist, so they search, choose from reviews, and leave one. Long-settled Vermonters just ask a neighbour.
It is a genuinely appealing mechanism. It is also not what the data shows:
the density explanation
weak
nothing
nothing
Net domestic migration against reviews per listing gives r = +0.169. Montana has the third-highest net in-migration rate in the country over 2021-24 and sits fourth from the bottom on reviews per listing. The mechanism sounds right and does no work.
What actually explains it: there are more businesses
The gap is real, but it is mostly in the denominator rather than the numerator — and it comes apart in two stages.
Stage one: a quarter of Vermont's listings are not businesses. Google Maps files parking lots, bus stops, parks, cemeteries and unlabelled pins alongside real businesses, and rural states carry far more of them:
24.7% of Vermont's listings versus 5.9% of Arizona's. Vermont's single largest listing category is no category at all (12.7%), followed by apartments, bus stops, farms, parks and cemeteries. Arizona's is dentists. Stripping the non-businesses moves the gap from 6.76x to 5.87x — real, but only about an eighth of the gap.
Stage two: Vermont has four times as many businesses per person.
| State | Business listings per 1,000 residents | Reviews per listing |
|---|---|---|
| Vermont | 89.1 | 35.6 |
| Montana | 80.8 | 43.8 |
| North Dakota | 72.0 | 37.5 |
| West Virginia | 58.7 | 44.6 |
| Florida | 50.6 | 123.9 |
| Utah | 27.3 | 124.7 |
| Hawaii | 26.9 | 134.3 |
| Nevada | 26.2 | 209.1 |
| Arizona | 21.5 | 152.9 |
A Vermont business shares the state's residents with roughly four times as many competitors as an Arizona one. Fewer customers per business means fewer reviews per business, and that is very nearly the whole story: regressing reviews per listing on log listings per capita gives
reviews per listing = 419.9 − 87.8 × ln(business listings per 1,000), R² = 0.652.
One variable, no tuning, and it accounts for 65.2% of the variation across all 50 states and DC.
Tourism comes back — at the right size
The interesting part is what the model gets wrong. Rank the states by how far they sit above or below the density prediction:
| State | Actual | Predicted | Residual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nevada | 209.1 | 133.1 | +76.1 |
| District of Columbia | 84.9 | 35.5 | +49.4 |
| Florida | 123.9 | 75.3 | +48.6 |
| Colorado | 84.6 | 59.3 | +25.3 |
| Tennessee | 93.6 | 73.4 | +20.2 |
| West Virginia | 44.6 | 62.3 | −17.7 |
| California | 81.4 | 99.3 | −17.9 |
| Mississippi | 48.4 | 68.8 | −20.5 |
| Alaska | 54.5 | 81.5 | −27.0 |
| Idaho | 80.4 | 111.6 | −31.2 |
Las Vegas, Washington DC, Florida, Colorado, Nashville. The five states the density model most under-predicts are visitor destinations — so tourism was not wrong, it was mis-sized. It is not the explanation for why Nevada beats Vermont six to one; it is the explanation for the 34.8% the denominator leaves over.
Nevada is also not simply Las Vegas. Clark County averages 250.9 reviews per listing, but strip it out and the rest of Nevada still averages 93.8 — comfortably above Vermont, Montana and the Dakotas.
The same mechanism inside a single profession
If customers-per-business is the real driver, it should reappear within one category, where the businesses are doing identical work. It does:
| State | Dentist listings per 100,000 residents | Reviews per dentist |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | 104.3 | 15.2 |
| Connecticut | 103.2 | 39.2 |
| District of Columbia | 102.4 | 29.6 |
| Vermont | 88.8 | 29.9 |
| Hawaii | 46.5 | 24.4 |
| Utah | 43.6 | 81.3 |
| Nevada | 38.8 | 114.1 |
| Arizona | 36.5 | 91.3 |
Vermont has 88.8 dentist listings per 100,000 residents against Nevada's 38.8 — 2.3 times as many dentists chasing the same population. Across all 51 jurisdictions the within-category correlation is r = −0.602 for dentists, −0.521 for auto repair shops and −0.485 for hair salons. Weaker than the aggregate, consistently negative, same direction.
Hawaii is the one that doesn't fit: at 46.5 dentists per 100,000 it should sit near Utah's 81.3 reviews and instead manages 24.4. We don't have an explanation for Hawaii, and would rather say so than invent one.
The number we should have computed first
Reviews per listing answers "how much attention does the average business get," which turns out to be mostly a question about how many businesses there are. Reviews per resident asks how much reviewing people actually do:
| State | Reviews per resident |
|---|---|
| District of Columbia | 6.76 |
| Florida | 6.27 |
| Nevada | 5.48 |
| Colorado | 5.14 |
| Tennessee | 4.84 |
| North Dakota | 2.70 |
| Idaho | 2.69 |
| Mississippi | 2.64 |
| West Virginia | 2.62 |
| Alaska | 2.57 |
The spread falls from 6.76x to 2.63x, and the leaderboard rearranges into something that looks like visitor volume rather than a digital divide. Americans review at broadly similar rates. What differs is how many businesses that reviewing gets spread across.
What it means
The first number we computed was real, reproducible, and almost entirely a measurement artifact. Reviews per listing is a ratio, and ratios have denominators; this one was quietly reporting how many businesses a state has per person while appearing to report how engaged its consumers are.
Two plausible stories — tourism, newcomers — each survived a moment's thought and neither survived a test. Tourism turned out to be real but roughly a third the size of the effect it was invoked to explain. It is worth remembering how easily either could have been published instead, with a chart that looked exactly like the one at the top of this page.
Sources
Query the Google Maps dataset yourself
Every figure here came from live queries against Crawlora's Google Maps business dataset — 132 million listings, filterable by country, state, county, category, rating and review count. 2,000 free credits a month, no card.
Frequently asked questions
Which US states have the most Google reviews per business?
Nevada leads at 209.1 reviews per business listing, followed by Arizona at 152.9, Hawaii at 134.3, Utah at 124.7 and Florida at 123.9. The lowest are Vermont at 35.6, North Dakota at 37.5, Montana at 43.8, West Virginia at 44.6 and Iowa at 46.1. The spread between the extremes is 5.87x once non-business points of interest are excluded, and 6.76x before.
Is the state review gap caused by tourism?
Not the bulk of it. If visitors drove the gap it should shrink in categories tourists never use, and it does not: Nevada beats Vermont 3.81x on dentists versus 3.61x on restaurants. Hawaii is decisive — heavily visited, its restaurants average 429.5 reviews per listing but its dentists average 24.4, below Vermont's 29.9. Tourism does show up as the residual: the states a listing-density model most under-predicts are Nevada, DC, Florida, Colorado and Tennessee.
Do people in fast-growing states leave more Google reviews?
No. Correlating reviews per business listing against Census net domestic migration for 2021-24 gives r = +0.169, effectively nothing. Population growth gives r = +0.392 and state population r = +0.179. Montana has the third-highest net in-migration rate in the country and ranks fourth from the bottom on reviews per listing.
What actually explains the difference in reviews per business between states?
How many businesses there are per person. Vermont has 89.1 business listings per 1,000 residents against Arizona's 21.5, so each Vermont business draws on roughly a quarter as many potential customers. Reviews per listing against log listings per capita gives r = -0.807, and that single term explains 65.2% of the variance across all 50 states and DC. The same mechanism repeats within single categories: r = -0.602 for dentists, -0.521 for auto repair shops and -0.485 for hair salons.
Do Americans in different states review businesses at different rates?
Much less than the per-listing figures suggest. Measured as reviews per resident rather than per listing, the spread across states falls from 6.76x to 2.63x — from 6.76 reviews per resident in DC, 6.27 in Florida and 5.48 in Nevada down to 2.57 in Alaska, 2.62 in West Virginia and 2.64 in Mississippi. The remaining pattern tracks visitor volume rather than any digital divide.
Why are so many Google Maps listings not businesses?
Google Maps files parking lots, bus stops, parks, cemeteries, playgrounds and unlabelled pins alongside real businesses, and rural states carry far more of them. 24.7% of Vermont's listings fall into that group against 5.9% of Arizona's, and Vermont's single largest listing category is no category at all at 12.7%. Excluding them narrows the state gap from 6.76x to 5.87x, about an eighth of the total.