Methodology

How we decide who goes first

Published in full, because a ranking you can't interrogate is just an advertisement with extra steps. If you think we've got a business wrong, this page tells you exactly which lever to argue about.

What goes into the order

Five factors, weighted as below. The weights are the same in every category and every location.

Status: live. Every list on this site is ordered by the score these weights produce, computed once per data refresh and identical for every visitor. Scores are shown out of 100 on each listing.

  • Independent corroboration

    30%

    How many separate sources describe the same business, and how strongly they agree. Open mapping data maintained independently of Google is the primary cross-check. Held for 95% of listings, which is why it leads.

  • Review history

    25%

    Volume first, rating second. The difference between five reviews and fifty is meaningful, so volume is scored on a log scale and weighted more heavily than the star average — a 4.9 from six reviews does not outrank a 4.6 from four hundred.

  • Site reachability

    20%

    Whether the business's website actually resolves, and how recently we last genuinely reached it. A dead site is excluded from the directory outright rather than ranked low. A site that answers but blocks automated readers scores below a live one and well above one we could not reach at all.

  • Contact integrity

    15%

    Whether the phone number on the listing matches the one the business publishes itself. A contradiction is the only thing that scores zero here; having nothing to compare is treated as missing evidence, not as a mark against the business.

  • Registration signals

    10%

    A published ABN, confirmed against the national register. Most small businesses never publish one, so this is additive only: it can lift a listing and its absence subtracts nothing.

What we check

  • Corroborated by an independent source

    We match every listing against open mapping data maintained separately from Google. One source is an entry; two independent sources agreeing is evidence the business exists as described.

  • Review history, not just the average

    4.7 from twelve reviews is a different fact from 4.7 from three hundred. We hold the count alongside the rating, weight the count more heavily, and show both.

  • A website that actually loads

    Checked on a schedule, and we record the date we last genuinely reached it rather than the date we last tried. Businesses whose site is dead are excluded from the directory entirely.

  • Contact details that agree with each other

    The phone number on the listing checked against the number on the business's own website. A mismatch usually means a stale listing or a lead reseller sitting between you and the person doing the work.

  • ABN confirmed against the national register

    Where a business publishes an ABN we confirm it and show the registered entity alongside the trading name. Most small businesses don't publish one, so this is a bonus signal rather than a baseline.

  • Published opening hours

    Read from the listing rather than the business's marketing copy. Where hours could not be read we say so rather than guessing, because publishing an open business as shut is worse than saying nothing.

What is deliberately ignored

  • Whether a business advertises with us — there is no advertising product
  • Whether a business has claimed its listing
  • How much a business spends on anything, anywhere
  • Whether a business has complained about its position
  • Any relationship, commercial or otherwise, with any other company

Where this method is weak

It cannot see when reviews arrived. Forty reviews earned steadily over six years and forty earned in a fortnight score identically here, and the second is far more likely to have been bought. We hold review counts but not the dates behind them, so until that changes this page will keep saying so rather than implying a check we don't run.

It favours businesses with a web presence. A superb sole trader who has never built a website and works entirely on word of mouth will not do well here, and that is a genuine limitation rather than a claim about their work.

It is slow to reflect change. A business that has recently declined can carry a good position for a while on the strength of its history, and a new business with excellent work has to accumulate evidence before it climbs.

It cannot see the job you are actually hiring for. Our checks measure whether a business is who it says it is. They cannot tell you whether it is good at bathroom waterproofing specifically. Read the reviews for that, and get more than one quote.

Think we've got something wrong?

Corrections are free and we act on evidence, not volume of complaint. 20,703 businesses are listed here and some proportion of what we hold about them is wrong.

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