How rankings work
Only customers decide who's #1. Rankings use one thing: ratings from people who used the business. No business can pay to rank higher, and nothing a business buys from us is visible to the ranking formula.
City by city
Each branch of a company is ranked separately in its own market. A bad job in one city never affects the same company somewhere else.
The last 12 months
Only ratings from the last 12 months count, so scores keep up with how a business is doing now. Older reviews stay visible as history, and each profile shows a year-by-year record.
One rating per person, per business, per year
You can update this year's rating anytime. A year after you rate, you can rate again, and that becomes a new entry.
How the score is calculated
Ratings from people who confirm they hired the business count fully. Ratings without that confirmation count half, and ratings from clients referred by a local professional count one and a half. A business needs 3 or more recent ratings to be ranked.
To keep a business with two 5-star ratings from jumping past one with 80 great ratings, every score starts near the average for that service in that market and moves toward the business's own average as ratings come in. After about 10 ratings, the business's own average does most of the work.
Badges
- Licensed & Insured: current insurance on file, plus a current license where the trade requires one. It disappears the day either expires.
- Google verified: the name and phone match an open Google business listing.
- Top Rated: the top 10% of a service in a market, with at least 10 recent ratings.
The Service Rank Awards
Each January we name Company of the Year, Top 3 and Top 5 in every category and market. See how awards work.
Busy businesses
A business can pause new work for up to 30 days at a time. Its ranking is kept; it just moves below businesses that are taking new customers until it's back.