How Top Recommends works, and why you can trust it.

Businesses can pay to be seen. They can never pay to be recommended. Nothing a business buys moves a recommendation count, a ranking, a badge, or the order we introduce people.

• Only confirmed and validated neighbor recommendations count toward rankings, awards, and introductions.
• Confirmed means a neighbor verified their name, email, and phone before the recommendation was recorded.
• Validated means the business or a confirmed job backed it up.
• Mentions gathered from local groups are shown separately as mentions by neighbors in local groups, and are never counted.

• Self recommendations do not count.
• Reciprocal pairs, where two businesses recommend each other, count once.
• One person can recommend the same business once per month.
• Device and pattern checks catch repeat submissions from the same place.
• Businesses caught gaming lose their recommendations.

• Recommenders appear by first name only.
• Contact details are shared only inside an introduction the neighbor agreed to.
• We never sell or publish a neighbor's email or phone number.