Does your store's Google rating even matter anymore? Data on 254k NY reviews, compared with NJ, CA, MI and MA.

Earlier this year I posted Google review numbers for NJ, CA, Michigan and Mass. NY took a lot longer than I expected. Somewhere between June and September Google changed how reviews load, and my old method started returning 3 reviews for a store that has 4,900, so I had to redo it the slow way.

NY: 687 licensed storefronts, about 254,000 reviews. Things operators might care about:

• 95% of ratings are 5 stars, the highest of the five states (MA is lowest at 88.6%). The top 10 NY stores span 4.79 to 4.97. Does anyone still compete on rating?
• About 1 in 6 ratings has no text. Some stores are at 30 to 60%, which usually means asking at the register. Mass is at 1 in 4, Michigan 1 in 10.
• Hours: 84+ hours a week goes with 2.2x the monthly reviews in NYC, 2.6x upstate. Correlation, not proof.
• Owner replies split hard: 59% of reviews get a reply, but 140 stores answer under 10% and 39 have never replied.
• Ratings slide with age: 2026 openers 4.93, 2023 openers 4.71.
• NY has the fewest reviews per store of the five states (about 370, vs 665 to 1,276 elsewhere), but its fastest store added 1,095 reviews in 90 days, nearly 3x any other state's leader.
• Complaints: price 27.5%, staff 22.1%, wait 12.8%. Price is the top complaint in every state we've done.

Curious how other operators see it: is the rating still worth chasing, or is it all volume and replies now?

NY report: https://dopecast.net/reports/new-york-dispensary-reviews

All five states: https://dopecast.net/reports/dispensary-reviews-by-state