Anecdote: just before the pandemic me and my SO searched for a Sushi place one day. Found one on Google, 4.7 star average on 500ish reviews. Should be good, right?
Nope. It was literally the worst restaurant experience of my life. Nobody was inside. Weird location. The menu screamed "run by cheap assholes trying to scam you". It's always a huge red flag when well over 100 menu items exist and all are from different Asian cuisines (BUT authentic Chinese restaurants will still be amazing despite 700+ items).
Hungry, we still sat down and ate and dear god was it bad. I will spare you details. Some weird Indian dude pretended to service us, food was worse than gas station sushi.
So what happened? We made the mistake to just look at the summed score and not the reviews. It were obvious paid Indian reviews and bots. So obvious that I was angry at myself for the stupidity not to check more closely and angry at Google to allow such bullshit on their platform.