How we keep it honest

A number is only worth having if people can believe it. This is what we do, and what we don't claim to do.

How a recommendation counts

• It has to be confirmed. We email a link to the address someone gives us, and nothing counts until they tap it.
• One person, one recommendation. The same person can't recommend the same page twice. We treat addresses that differ only by a "+tag" (and, for Gmail, by dots) as the same inbox, so they can't be used to count more than once.
• Common throwaway addresses are blocked. We turn away the well-known disposable email services.
• There are limits. We limit how fast recommendations can arrive from one place, for one address, and for one page, to slow down automated attempts.

You can see the shape of it

Every page shows when its recommendations arrived: the first date, the most recent, and a chart by month. If a number appeared overnight, that shows. We think this is more honest than claiming it can't be gamed, because nothing can be.

Nobody can pay for position

There is no paid listing, no sponsored placement and no premium tier. In our directory, people are ordered by how many local people have recommended them and how close they are to the place you're looking at. We take no payment from anyone to change that.

Nobody writes about a business except the business

There are no reviews, no comments and no free text from customers. The only words on a page are the ones its owner wrote. There's no negative option either, so nothing can be used to attack a competitor.

What we hold about the people who recommend

We keep a one-way fingerprint of the email address, so we can tell that the same person hasn't recommended twice. We can't turn the fingerprint back into the address, and the email we send to confirm is cleared from our system once it has gone. Recommenders are never named on a page. The privacy page has the details.

What we don't claim

• We confirm an email address, not a customer. We can't know that every recommender actually used the person. That's why we show the shape of the data and keep every recommendation simple.
• A recommendation isn't a safety check. It's not a licence, an insurance cover, a qualification or a background check. For work that needs one of those, ask to see it.
• We can't promise it's impossible to fake. We make it hard, we make it visible, and we remove things that shouldn't be there.

If something looks wrong

Every page has a "Request removal" link. If you're the person on it and want it gone, you can delete your own profile from your dashboard at any time. If a page isn't yours, or the details are wrong, tell us: we confirm your email address, then look at it ourselves. You can withdraw a recommendation you made at any time from the link in the email we sent you.

More on the thinking: why recommendations, not reviews.