Editorial policy

The same rules for every firm

Every firm is scored on the published Rated Score method for its trade. We don't make exceptions, and we don't adjust a score by hand.

Commercial arrangements stay out of scores

Sponsored listings and paid profile extras are recorded separately from the data the score is calculated from. Sponsored listings are labelled and kept outside ranked lists.

Review patterns

We look for signs that Google reviews aren't genuine, such as sudden bursts or many single-review accounts. A flagged firm is held for a manual check and labelled "Review pattern under check". We don't remove or penalise a firm automatically.

Automation

We use scripts to calculate scores and to help find firms and collect public facts. Every fact that affects a score is checked by a person against its source before it's published.

Mystery shopping

We may ask firms for fee quotes as a prospective buyer to check what they charge in practice. We publish the fee structure we were quoted, never recordings or staff names.

Corrections

Firms can send evidence of an error through the corrections page. We check it against the public source and update the profile and its "data checked" date.