Open a business profile in Germany on Google Maps, go to the reviews tab, and copy three things from the page. The calculation runs in your browser; the calculator does not transmit the numbers you type.
Since April 2026 Google shows a notice on business profiles in Germany when reviews were removed after defamation complaints. It counts removals processed in the last 365 days (the removed reviews may be older) and only gives a range.
scenario = (rating × ratings + s × removed) / (ratings + removed), for both ends of the range. s is the star value you choose for a removed review. The result says what the rating would be if the removed reviews had that value. It is not a corrected or recovered rating.
This assumes the displayed rating is the average of the visible ratings, rounded to one decimal, so the visible star sum is taken as displayed rating × displayed count. The result is shown to one decimal, and the note below gives the range that the rounding alone allows under that assumption.
The top bucket “more than 250” has no upper end. The calculator then estimates one (the larger of 500, 5 % of the reviews, or twice the lower end) and marks the result as estimated.
1 ★ is the minimum-star scenario and 3 ★ the midpoint scenario. Neither estimates the real, unknown star values of the removed reviews. Some reviews are removed for good reasons, for example fake reviews or insults.
The local Ghost Stars explorer does the same for the places a bounded Maps search returns for an area, using the exact star histogram, and adds ratings for the most recent months. It needs a local browser to read Google Maps, so it cannot run inside a web page.