Rankings you can't audit are ads with extra steps. Here is our entire method — the same formula, applied identically to every company in every city.
To appear at all, a contractor must hold an active Washington L&I license with bond and insurance on record. This is a gate, not a score — fail it and nothing else matters.
We combine Google rating and review count using a Bayesian weighted average (formula below), so proven volume beats a handful of perfect reviews.
Data is refreshed monthly. Companies earning reviews now rise; reputations coasting on old glory sink. No snapshot is ever older than one refresh cycle.
No editor moves a company. No payment moves a company. Claiming a listing corrects facts (hours, services) — never rank.
score = (v ÷ (v + m)) × R + (m ÷ (v + m)) × C
Where R is the company's Google rating, v is its review count,m = 10 is the confidence prior, and C = 4.5 is the regional average rating. In plain English: a rating earns its full weight only as review volume proves it. A 5.0 across 4 reviews scores 4.64; a 4.9 across 300 scores 4.89 — and ranks higher.
Why Bayesian weighting? Because raw averages reward tiny samples. Four five-star reviews can be four relatives; three hundred can't. The prior (m) pulls low-volume companies toward the regional average until real evidence accumulates — the same technique used by film-ranking sites for decades.
Ratings and review counts come from public Google Business listings, refreshed monthly. License, bond, and insurance status come from Washington State Department of Labor & Industries public records at lni.wa.gov. We display what the public record says — if it's wrong at the source, a contractor can claim their listing and point us to the correction.
What we deliberately don't use: our own opinions, mystery-shopper visits, advertiser relationships (we have none), or engagement tricks. The ranking is reproducible from public data — that's the entire point.