9,154 One- and Two-Star Vet Reviews: A Model Classified 70.6% of 9,149 Labeled as Mainly About How the Practice Is Run

A model classified the main reason in 9,149 one- and two-star Google reviews of 296 high-review-count veterinary practices in eight U.S. metros.

TAMPA, FL, UNITED STATES, October 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A new study of 9,154 written one- and two-star Google reviews of 296 high-review-count veterinary practices finds that how the practice is run was the model-classified main reason in 70.6 percent of the 9,149 reviews the main-reason pass labelled. The model classified the veterinary medicine itself as the main reason in 28.1 percent of the labeled reviews, and 1.3 percent were unclear.

The study was published by Sales Roadmap (salesroadmaps.com) and conducted by Kamyar Shah, a fractional COO and founder of World Consulting Group. It covers veterinary practices in Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbus, Denver, Tampa and Kansas City. The reviews are the written one- and two-star reviews of at least five words among the up-to-60 lowest-rated reviews retrieved per business, with review dates from 2008-08-11 to 2026-09-30.

The medicine is in the reviews too. The model assigned at least one core-service label, covering the medicine and the handling of the animal, to 39.6 percent of the 9,154 reviews. The clinical quality label was assigned to 35.8 percent of the 9,154 reviews. A review can carry both kinds of label, so the study reports the main-reason result and the label shares separately.

Staff conduct was the most common theme. The model assigned the staff conduct label to 45.5 percent of the 9,154 reviews, communication failure to 40.9 percent, pricing transparency to 38.3 percent and scheduling and access to 22.6 percent. These are themes a model assigned to what reviewers wrote, not verified events, and the shares overlap.

One reviewer wrote: "I called twice and asked for a call back. They couldn't be bothered." Another wrote: "Waited over 35 minutes for my dogs to be taken back for an appointment"

"A practice owner can read these reviews as a list of handoffs to check in their own records," said Kamyar Shah. "The callback, the estimate and the wait are all named in them."

The number that keeps this honest. The 296 practices sampled hold 227,903 lifetime Google reviews between them. Of those, 15,220, or 6.7 percent, are one or two stars, and 86.7 percent are five stars. The study describes what the one- and two-star reviews say. None of its figures is a share of clients.

How the study was done. Reviews were retrieved through the DataForSEO business data API. In each metro, up to 200 listings were screened and, after filters including a cap of two locations per brand, the 40 businesses with the most Google reviews were sampled. Twenty-four businesses were excluded, including 6 listed as emergency veterinarian services and 9 specialty or emergency referral hospitals. Even so, 14.3 percent of the 9,154 reviews match a keyword pattern for emergency, specialist, referral, oncology, neurology or after-hours vocabulary. A language model, Claude Haiku 4.5, classified the main reason, and a second model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, classified 200 of the same reviews. On the binary question of how the business is run against every other main reason, the two agreed on 92.5 percent, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.83. No sample was checked against human coding.

"The study counts what reviewers wrote and how a model labeled it," Shah said. "It does not judge whether any practice did anything wrong."

The full study, including every theme, the method and its limitations, is available at https://salesroadmaps.com/veterinary-negative-reviews-study/

ABOUT Kamyar Shah is a Fractional COO, Fractional CMO, and Executive Coach, and the founder of World Consulting Group, with over 25 years of experience helping organizations achieve operational excellence and sustainable growth. He has led 650+ consulting engagements producing more than $300M in measurable results. More at https://kamyarshah.com and https://www.worldconsultinggroup.com

CONTACT Kamyar Shah World Consulting Group https://kamyarshah.com/contact/

KEYWORDS veterinary practice, online reviews, negative reviews, veterinary clinic operations, practice management, fractional COO, Google reviews, Kamyar Shah

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