Home / Methodology
How vendor records are built
Vendor pages show public records with the date they were pulled and a link to the source. They do not assign a grade. The reader draws the conclusion; the page shows the evidence.
Sources
| check | source | what is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| OSHA inspections | OSHA establishment search, federal and state plan data | Inspections opened in the last five years, how many carried violations, most recent date, penalties where listed. Establishments are matched by name and state, so a common name can pick up an unrelated company; each row links to the record so that can be checked. |
| BBB | Better Business Bureau profile | Letter rating, accreditation, complaints closed in the last three years. |
| Google reviews | Google Business Profile | Rating, count, star distribution, review topics as Google surfaces them. Topics dominated by pay, invoices or vendors usually indicate subcontractor reviews rather than client reviews. |
| Job postings | Public job boards | Count of open postings and the states they are in, used as evidence of where a vendor actually staffs. |
| State license and good standing | State licensing boards and Secretary of State registries | License status and entity standing where the state publishes it. |
| Wage and hour | U.S. Department of Labor enforcement data | Closed cases with back wages or penalties. |
| Federal exclusions | SAM.gov | Active exclusions from federal contracting. |
What the statuses mean
- Checked: the source was pulled on the date shown and the figures are what it returned.
- No record found: the source was searched and returned nothing matching. That is not the same as a clean history; name variants and establishments in other states can be missed.
- Not yet pulled: the check has not run for this vendor. Nothing should be inferred from it.
What is not done
- No composite score. Weighting an OSHA citation against a Google review would be an opinion, and the page is not the place for it.
- No employee-review sites. Their terms prohibit reuse and the signal is weak for this buyer.
- No pay-to-list, no paid placement, no removal for a fee.
Corrections and claims
A vendor can claim its page to add licensing, insurance and coverage documents, and to respond to any record. Records are not removed on request; a correction is added when the source is wrong or the match is wrong. Use the request form and mark it as a correction or a claim.
Ownership
The site is operated independently of any vendor listed. Where a provider is featured on the site, that relationship is disclosed on the about page, and the featured provider is subject to the same record checks as every other vendor.