Review policy
Reviews are the part of a directory easiest to quietly corrupt, and the corruption usually looks like good marketing. Here is what we will and will not do, written down so you can hold us to it.
- We do not gate reviews
- Review gating means asking how someone feels first and only inviting the happy ones to post publicly. It is common, it is effective, and we do not do it. Everyone who is invited to review gets the same invitation regardless of what they are likely to say.
- We do not write or buy reviews
- No review on this site is written by us, by a business about itself, or by anyone paid to write it. We will remove any we find and say so on the listing.
- A business cannot delete a bad review
- Claiming a listing lets an operator correct facts about their business. It does not give them the ability to remove a review, and paying us does not either. A review comes down only if it breaks the rules below.
- Ratings from elsewhere are labeled as such
- Where we show a star rating collected by another platform, we say where it came from and we do not present it as ours. It is also deliberately excluded from our own structured data, so search engines are not told we gathered ratings we did not.
When a review does come down
Being negative is not on this list, and never will be. A review is removed only if it:
- Identifies a resident, or describes their health or care in a way that identifies them.
- Contains a threat, a slur, or abuse directed at a person.
- Is about a different business, or about something other than a direct experience.
- Was posted by someone with an undisclosed stake in the business or a competitor.
- Makes a factual claim that is demonstrably false and would mislead a family.
The first reason is the one we apply most carefully. A relative describing a parent’s medical condition in a public review is sharing someone else’s health information, and that person did not agree to it.
Common questions
Can a business pay to have a review removed?
No. Reviews are removed only for the reasons published on this page, and payment is not one of them. Featured placement is the only thing a business can buy here, and it affects neither reviews nor rankings.
Can I review a facility here?
Not yet. The moderation queue that reviews would pass through is built, but the submission form is not, so there is currently nowhere to leave one. We would rather say that than collect reviews we cannot yet moderate properly.
What happens after I report a review?
A person reads it against the list of removal reasons on this page. If it comes down we record why. If it stays up, it stays up even if the business would prefer otherwise.
Reporting something
If you run the business, claim your listing and tell us in the corrections box — that reaches us with a record of who sent it.
See also: trust and data and how we score.