Editorial standard
How we verify every listing
77 companies, 275 cited source pages, and a hard rule that a blank field beats a plausible guess. Here is exactly what we do and do not do.
The bar a company has to clear
Two fields are non-negotiable: a working phone number and a live website, each confirmed on a page we opened ourselves. A company that fails either one does not get listed at all — not listed with a gap. During the launch build, four Dallas-area companies with legitimate Better Business Bureau profiles and confirmed phone numbers were left out entirely because we could not confirm a website for them.
Everything else is optional and honest. Address, email, years in business, BBB rating, certifications — if the company does not publish it and we cannot find it on an accepted source, the field stays empty on the profile and says so. We would rather look incomplete than look confident and be wrong.
Sources we accept
- The company's own website. Its contact page, service-area page, locations page, and service pages. This is the primary source for phone numbers, and for 30 of the 35 independents in our first Dallas-side batch the phone came straight from the company's own click-to-call link.
- Franchise and dealer locators. For companies operating under a national brand, the brand's own locator is authoritative for which office covers which territory.
- Better Business Bureau profiles. Used for legal entity name, years in business, accreditation status, rating, and service-area listings. Where only the BBB printed a phone number, we say so in the record.
- Industry association member lists. The Foundation Performance Association's member roster, for example. Exactly one company in our first Dallas-side batch appears on it, and we did not imply otherwise for anyone else.
Sources we refuse
We do not take listing data from Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, Porch, Nextdoor, or mapping products. Those platforms are built to sell leads, which means they carry duplicate profiles for the same company, tracking phone numbers that route through a broker, and listings for businesses that no longer exist. Our build pipeline strips any source URL from those domains automatically before a row can be published.
One narrow exception, clearly labeled: national cost-guide sites are cited on our cost calculator and service pages for price statistics only, never for contractor identity or contact details. Those citations name the publisher every time.
How we decide a company covers your city
Only two things count. First, the company names the city on its own pages or in its BBB service-area listing. Second, the company's own business address is in that city — a company headquartered in Irving serves Irving. We do not infer coverage from distance, from a metro-wide marketing phrase, or from a competitor's territory.
This makes some listings look thinner than they are. Thirteen of the 35 companies in our first independent batch publish no city list at all, either because their site never names cities or because the relevant page was unavailable. Those companies appear on county pages and in the full directory, but not on any city page, and their profiles say exactly that.
How we handle conflicts
Real records disagree, and we do not quietly pick a winner. Three companies in the launch dataset have Better Business Bureau records that conflict across locations — an A+ profile for one branch and a much lower rating for the headquarters entity, or a company site claiming A+ against a BBB profile showing no rating at all. In those cases the profile shows the conflict rather than the flattering half of it.
We also collapse duplicates rather than padding the count. Companies matching on website domain or on phone number are merged into one listing, with the union of their confirmed coverage and the combined source list. Six merges happened in the launch build.
What we do not claim to have checked
- Licensing. Texas does not license foundation repair contractors as a trade. There is no state registry to check, so there is no license number on these profiles. Structural engineers are licensed in Texas, and if you want an independent opinion that is who to hire.
- Insurance and bonding. Ask for a certificate of insurance before anyone digs. We have not verified coverage for any company here.
- Warranties. Where a company advertises a lifetime or transferable warranty, we record it as a claim the company makes. We have not read the contract.
- Work quality. We publish no star ratings and no reviews. We are not in a position to judge workmanship, and an aggregate score assembled from platforms that sell leads would tell you nothing useful.
Corrections
Business details go stale. If a phone number here is wrong, a company has closed, or a service area has changed, tell us and we will fix or remove the listing. Corrections do not cost anything and are not tied to whether a company advertises with us.