The YardGrade Score: how we rank companies

How does the YardGrade Score work?

Each company's score is the sum of three pillars. The score is deterministic: the same data always produces the same number, so anyone can audit any position on any of our 2,288 listings. You'll find the score with its full pillar breakdown at the top of every company profile.

Pillar 1: Reviews & reputation (45 points)

A raw star rating is misleading when the review count is tiny. YardGrade fixes this by blending each company's Google rating with the dataset average, treating every company as if it started with 10 imaginary reviews at the mean of 4.73 stars — the same shrinkage approach behind IMDb's Top 250. A company with hundreds of reviews barely moves, while a 5.0 built on 4 reviews is pulled toward the average until it earns more history.

The adjusted rating maps onto 30 points (a 3.5★ adjusted rating scores zero; 5.0★ scores full marks), and review volume adds up to 15 points on a logarithmic scale that flattens out around 200 reviews. Companies with no Google reviews yet are scored at the market baseline for this pillar — their profile says so explicitly — so a new company is neither buried nor advantaged.

Pillar 2: Verified credentials (30 points)

Our crawler reads each company's own website looking for concrete, checkable statements: licensing and insurance claims, years in business, industry memberships and online booking. A claim only counts if we captured the exact sentence it came from, and every credential badge on a profile shows that verbatim quote. No quote, no points.

Honest limits: these are statements companies make about themselves. We quote the source next to every badge, but we do not independently verify licences, insurance policies or WSIB accounts — always confirm coverage directly before hiring. A company whose website makes no such statements simply scores 0 on this pillar; it is never penalized elsewhere for it.

Pillar 3: Web presence & proof (25 points)

Signals that a business is real, reachable and active. Our crawler checks whether each listed website actually loads, and our review analysis finds the themes that come up again and again for a company (“punctual”, “fair pricing”, “tidy worksite”) — each theme on a profile links to a real review quote behind it.

Two fairness rules. A website that blocks crawlers is not treated as dead — blocking bots is a legitimate choice, so it keeps most of the points. And a company whose website is down at check time loses presence points but is never removed from YardGrade; websites lapse and come back, and hiding the listing would help no one.

What does the score look like in practice?

Two hypothetical companies, scored with the live July 2026 dataset mean of 4.73 stars. Evergreen has a perfect rating on only 8 reviews and a website that states no credentials. Maple holds 4.8 stars over 280 reviews, and its site states it is licensed and insured, in business since 2009, and an industry member.

Maple wins, 84 to 56. The perfect 5.0 shrinks toward the mean on only 8 reviews, and Evergreen's silent website leaves the whole credentials pillar on the table. That gap — proven reputation plus stated, quotable credentials — is exactly what the score is built to surface. In the current dataset no company maxes every pillar, so scores in the high 80s are the practical ceiling; 90+ is theoretically possible.

Which companies get a score?

All of them. Every listing shows its score and full pillar breakdown, including companies that would prefer we didn't — a low score with visible reasons is more useful to you than a hidden one. Businesses that have closed are not screened out, and this page used to say they were dropped at collection. The records were collected in July 2026 and the export carries no closed-or-open field, so nothing has ever been dropped for being closed. Companies with thin review histories are scored at the market baseline for pillar 1, clearly labelled, and typically rank below proven companies until they build a track record.

Every web address on this site was fetched on August 26, 2026. 130 of them are not linked from their profile: the domain no longer answers, or it answers with a business that has nothing to do with the listing, because a lapsed domain gets rebought. A bot block, a slow response or a “coming soon” page is not counted, because none of those is evidence a site is gone. The company stays listed either way: a lapsed domain is not evidence anyone stopped trading.

Where does YardGrade's data come from?

YardGrade pulls ratings, review counts and business details from public Google Maps profiles, then our crawler reads each company's own website for credential statements, services and contact details — capturing the exact sentence behind every claim we display. Review themes come from analysing the Google reviews we already store, never from scraping private data. Market pricing across 14 categories is researched separately and every figure cites a named local contractor or authority. We do not buy reviews and we respect robots.txt.

How often does YardGrade refresh its data?

The current YardGrade dataset is stamped July 2026. We refresh review data, re-crawl websites and re-run the scoring on a rolling basis so positions track current reputation, and every page shows a visible last-updated date. If a business is sold, closed or corrects its details, email us and we update the record between scheduled refreshes.

What are the limits of the YardGrade Score?

A score is a strong starting point, not a guarantee. The reviews are Google's, not ours, so they carry Google's own biases. Credential badges quote what a company says about itself; YardGrade does not independently verify WSIB coverage, liability insurance or licences, and a high score does not vouch for any single job. The YardGrade Score is our own editorial metric — it is deliberately kept out of the review markup search engines read, where only real Google review data appears. Always get 3 written quotes, check insurance directly, and read recent reviews before you hire. YardGrade helps you build the shortlist; the due diligence is still yours.