Every place in the guide has one number: its reputation score. That number decides the order, and it is the only thing that decides the order — a higher place is not for sale.
Last updated: August 24, 2026
The reputation score is a number from 0 to 10 for a place's reputation: what guests actually thought of it, summarised in one figure. The better the reputation, the higher in the guide.
The judgment is the guests'. The calculation is ours — and it is exactly the same for every place in the guide.
No. Not with a subscription, not with an ad, and not by claiming a listing. There is no button, no rate and no exception.
Businesses can subscribe to software from us that helps them collect more and better reviews. That changes their reputation, and through their guests it changes their number. What it never changes is the calculation itself.
The score is built on the public reviews a place has on Google. The calculation itself is ours — the number is not a converted star average.
Experiences guests leave directly on Eat.Sleep.Do., written or on video, sit beside the number on that place's page. They do not count towards it today. So the number rests on reviews written without our involvement, somewhere we do not control.
Because five five-star reviews are not yet a proven reputation. A place with few reviews is pulled towards the middle in the calculation. As reviews come in, that place's own rating carries more weight and the correction disappears by itself.
A high number of reviews also earns a small bonus, because a rating with hundreds of reviews behind it is simply more certain than one with five. That bonus runs into a ceiling: past a certain point, more reviews add nothing further. And the bottom is fixed — one star is the floor, not zero.
You see one decimal, but we rank on the full number behind it. Two places both showing 9.7 do differ: in the rating, in the number of reviews, or in both. It cannot be anything else — those are the only two things in the calculation.
If they are identical down to the last decimal, the order falls back on a fixed internal sort. Not on who has claimed a listing, not on who is a Founding Member, and not on who pays.
Regularly, but not in the moment itself. A new review does not appear in the number straight away; it counts as soon as we recalculate that place's score. In practice that is days, not weeks.
It can. If the calculation changes, this page changes with it — that is what it is for.
What does not change is what is not in it. No paid placements, no ads, no preferential treatment. Anyone who wants to rank higher has exactly one route, and it runs through their guests.