How we score
The Trust Score is meant to answer one question: how much of what you are reading can be checked? It is editorial, and it is published here in full so you can disagree with it.
No listing carries a Trust Score yet
None of our 20published listings has been scored, so anywhere a score would appear you will see “not scored yet” instead of a number. The method below is what we intend to use, published in advance rather than reverse-engineered afterwards.
Until then, judge a listing on what it actually shows you: the state license record we link, whether the operator has claimed and corrected it, and what the reviews say.
What goes into it
- 1
License and inspection standing
Whether the state license is current, and what the inspection and complaint history on the public record looks like. This is the only component drawn entirely from a source outside our control, and it carries the most weight.
- 2
Review quality and recency
Not just an average. A strong rating from four years ago tells you less than a moderate one from last month, and a handful of reviews tells you less than a hundred.
- 3
Verification status
Whether someone connected to the business has claimed the listing and confirmed its details. This measures whether the information is maintained, not whether the care is good.
- 4
Responsiveness
Whether the business answers families who reach out through this site, and how quickly. A home that never responds is a worse outcome for a family than one that says it is full.
- 5
Years operating
Time under the current license. Longevity is weak evidence on its own, so it counts for the least of the five.
What can never affect it
Money. Paying for a Featured placement does not raise a Trust Score, and it does not change the order of search results, category pages or comparisons. The sponsored slot and the ranking are separate paths in the code specifically so that this stays checkable rather than being a promise you have to take on faith.
Hiring the company behind this directory does not affect it either. Nor does declining to.
What a score is not
It is not an assessment of care. We do not inspect facilities or observe how residents are treated, and no score here should be read as us saying a home is good or bad. It measures how much of a listing is verifiable — which is a useful thing to know, and a different thing entirely.
A low score most often means we simply do not hold much about a business yet.
More on our sources on the trust and data page, and on how reviews are handled in the review policy.