Is the ranking just an average star rating?
No, and deliberately so, a raw average star rating is easy to game or distort with just one or two reviews, a shop with a single five-star review would otherwise outrank a shop with fifty genuinely strong reviews, which is not a fair or useful comparison. Instead, this site combines two separate signals into one score, how many reviewers said they would visit again, and a star rating that is adjusted for how many reviews it is actually based on.
What does 'adjusted for how many reviews it's based on' actually mean?
It means a shop's star average gets pulled slightly toward a neutral, middle-of-the-road score until it has enough reviews to trust fully, a statistical technique that prevents one or two very early ratings, good or bad, from placing a nearly-unreviewed shop at either the very top or very bottom of a list where it does not really belong yet. As more genuine reviews come in, this adjustment matters less and the shop's score converges toward its true, honestly-earned average.
Why does 'would visit again' matter as much as the star rating?
Because it is a more behavioral, harder-to-inflate signal than a star rating alone, a reviewer picking between "I'd visit again" and "I'd visit again with some improvement" is making a genuinely practical judgment about the shop, not just rating their mood on the day they visited. This site weights that visit-again signal somewhat more heavily than the star rating in the combined score specifically because of that.
Does a shop with more reviews automatically rank higher than one with fewer?
Not automatically, a shop with fewer, genuinely strong reviews can still outrank a shop with many mediocre ones, since the score reflects quality and consistency, not raw review volume. What review count does affect is confidence, a shop with more reviews has its score pulled less toward the neutral baseline described above, so its position on the list is a more stable, reliable reflection of real visitor sentiment.
Do I need to worry about any of this as a visitor?
Not really, the practical takeaway is simple, a shop ranked near the top of its barangay has consistently earned strong, genuine reviews from real visitors, not just a lucky early rating or a large but mixed pile of reviews. If you want to actually improve a shop's ranking, or help a newer shop get a fairer, more confident score faster, leaving your own honest review after a visit is the single most direct way to do it, covered in our guide to supporting local Marikina coffee shops. A Not-So-Popular Kid is a good example of the other kind of signal, a personal write-up that carries weight precisely because it is one person's honest account.