How we list and rank businesses

Where facts come from

• Only the firm's own website and, later, the owner's own submission. No bulk database of other people's profiles.
• Every confirmed fact is one sentence quoted from a page, stored with its URL and the date we read it. A build step re-checks that each quote is still a verbatim substring of the saved page text.
• If a page does not say it, the fact is “not stated”. We never write “no”.
• Star ratings and review counts belong to Google. Google's Places policy does not allow storing them in pages we build, so a profile links to the live ratings and reviews on Google through its place id instead of copying numbers. We never invent reviews. A live rating widget (billed per view) and our own verified reviews are the planned next steps.

What puts a page in search engines

• A city gets its own page for a category only with at least 3 verified profiles in it. Smaller towns roll up to the nearest city page within 40 km (their profile says where they are based).
• A profile is indexable when it has a city page, contact data, a description of at least 40 words written only from confirmed facts and reviewed, and at least 1 confirmed fact with a quote. Listings are not yet confirmed by their owners; a listing will be marked verified only after the owner or the firm's own domain confirms it.
• Otherwise the listing is not published until the missing facts are confirmed.

What “Listed” means

• A business marked Listed comes from our own business database. We show only what the database states: name, phone, place and a map pin. Nothing else is said about it.
• A Listed business has no page of its own and is not offered to search engines. It becomes a full profile only after we read its own website and quote what it says, with the page and the date.
• Where a place is shown as “near”, we worked it out from the map pin. It is not the business's stated address.
• This portal is built in cooperation with Polish Network, the largest Polish-American network in the USA. A business marked with the small Polish flag comes from the Polish-American business directory, katalogfirm.us, the directory this database started from, and represents and serves the Polish-American community.
• Star ratings, review counts, websites and opening hours marked Google come from the business's own Google listing, matched by its phone number, as of the date on its page. They are Google's data, not ours, and we do not edit them.

Regulated professions

• For lawyers, health care providers and financial firms we list the name, phone and place from our database. We do not rate them, rank them or describe what they do ourselves; the star ratings and review counts shown come from Google.
• These professions have their own advertising rules, so a profile with quoted facts appears only after the license is verified in the official register.
• Nobody can pay for a place in these lists. Check the license of anyone you consider in the official register:
  • Connecticut eLicense lookup
  • FDIC BankFind
  • FINRA BrokerCheck
  • Florida Health License Verification
  • Illinois ARDC lawyer search
  • Illinois IDFPR license lookup
  • Indiana license verification
  • Indiana Roll of Attorneys
  • New Jersey attorney lookup (Disciplinary Review Board)
  • New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs license verification
  • New York attorney search (Unified Court System)
  • New York professions verification
  • NMLS Consumer Access
  • NPPES NPI Registry (federal)
  • SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure
  • State Bar of Arizona, for the public
  • The Florida Bar member directory
  • Wisconsin DSPS credentials
  • Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation

Ordering

More confirmed facts first, then a weekly rotation. Money does not buy position in the list. Paid or chosen premium listings, where there are any, are labeled and kept in their own block.

Premium listings

A premium listing is a business that paid for the placement, or that we chose because it meets our criteria. It appears in its own block, marked “Premium listing”, above the list of the places it serves, and as a marked card in the search results for those places, even when its office is somewhere else.

It never changes the order of the list below it and never changes a fact: the profile, the rating and the dates are the same as for every other business.

To be shown, a business must meet the same criteria as any other: its owner confirmed the profile and it is nearly complete. Where the rules on advertising by professionals need care, there are no premium listings: financial services, health care, lawyers.

Corrections and removals

Owners can correct, confirm or remove a listing: add or correct a business. Removal is honored the same day.