Editorial policy
Applies to every page on ContractorsRankedUpdated
ContractorsRanked publishes rankings and facts about contractors. This page explains who decides what we publish, how the words are produced, and what happens when we get something wrong.
Independence
Rankings come from the published CR Score method and nothing else. No business, advertiser or partner can buy a rank, change a score, or approve what we write about them.
- Paid placements are called Featured. They appear in a block labelled “Featured”, outside the ranked list, with at most 3 businesses per page, rotated daily.
- A Featured card shows the business’s real rank on that list. Paying never changes rank or CR Score.
- Revenue from Pro profiles, Featured slots and leads never feeds into the score.
How our pages are written
Lists, business profiles, cost guides and reports are built from data with fixed sentence patterns. A sentence like “9 of 41 roofers are open Saturdays” is filled in from that city’s own numbers, so each page says something specific and checkable.
- If a fact is missing, the sentence or table row that needs it is left out. We never write “N/A” or fill in a typical value.
- Every “best” names its basis, such as best by CR Score, and every list shows the date it was scored.
- Every number names its source: “from 1,049 Google reviews”, “license checked October 2026”.
- Spelling, currency and distance follow the country: CAD and kilometres in Canada, USD and miles in the United States.
Licenses and credentials
“License verified” appears only when we matched an active license for that trade in a state’s public file, with the month we checked. We never call a business unlicensed: a missing match can mean the state keeps no public file, or the license is held under another name.
Before hiring, check the license yourself with the state board. How we verify licenses lists the boards and lookup pages we use.
Cost figures
Cost guides give a low, typical and high price for a named job, with the basis (per square foot, per job), the month, and the sources. Regional adjustments are applied only where a documented index exists, and the page says so.
Prices are estimates for planning. A written quote from a licensed contractor is the only firm price.
Corrections
Anyone can report an error: a homeowner, a business, or another publisher.
- Wrong facts (hours, address, trades, service area, license) are checked against the business’s website, Google listing, the state license file or a phone call, then fixed.
- Closed or duplicate businesses are removed from rankings once confirmed.
- If a correction changes a rank, the list’s update log records the change and its date.
- We don’t remove accurate facts, or change a rank, because a business asks.
Business-owned content
Some profiles include a business’s description of itself. That text is labelled as the business’s own words and is never mixed into ranking reasons or our summaries. We don’t check marketing claims in it, and they play no part in the score.
Google ratings are shown as visible text with their source, for example “4.8 from 1,049 Google reviews”. We don’t mark them up as our own ratings.
Reusing our data
Figures from our rankings, cost guides and reports may be quoted and reused, including by answer engines, with credit to ContractorsRanked and a link to the page they came from.
Contact the editors
Email hello@contractorsranked.com with the page link, what is wrong, and a source if you have one. You can also use the contact form.
Read how scores are built on How we rank.