Cómo funciona VerifiedPros

Verification Process

Every listing’s license, registration, and (where applicable) bond and insurance status is sourced from public records — not from what the business tells us. We import these on a monthly schedule and display the “Verified” date alongside each badge.

• Construction trades — Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) contractor registration dataset, refreshed monthly.
• Healthcare professionals — federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) National Provider Identifier (NPI) registry, refreshed monthly.
• Other categories — comparable state or federal licensing authorities where available.

Content & Image Screening

All claimed-listing content (descriptions, photos, responses to reviews) is reviewed by our moderation team before going live. We screen for:

• False or misleading claims about licenses, certifications, or scope of work.
• Photos that aren’t of the business’s own work (stock-photo abuse).
• Discriminatory, offensive, or sexual content of any kind.
• Off-topic content, spam, or attempts to drive traffic away from the directory.
• Reviews from accounts showing velocity-flag patterns (sock-puppeting, review-bombing).

Businesses can appeal a moderation decision via their business portal. We do not allow businesses to remove individual negative reviews; we do remove reviews that violate our screening rules regardless of star rating.

How Search Results Are Presented

When you search VerifiedPros, every matching business appears in one fair ranked list — no separate advertiser panels, no advertiser-only top of the page. Paid listings are weighted up within bounded limits and are clearly labeled.

How we rank. Each listing’s position blends two things, then rotates daily:

• Proximity. Businesses closer to your search location rank higher.
• Subscription tier. Paid listings are weighted up because their subscription supports verification, scholarship sponsorships, and platform operations — but only by a bounded amount, so a closer free business can still rank above a more distant paid one. Paid listings carry a clear paid-placement label, and Premium listings also show a ★ next to the business name — so you can always tell which results are weighted up, and why.
• Daily rotation. Among businesses that rank about the same, a deterministic per-day shuffle gently varies the order so no listing sits permanently on top. Tomorrow’s order will be a little different from today’s, but you see a consistent order during your visit.

What you see on every card. Phone, license number, verified-license date, and a one-click deep link to the state’s official license lookup. No mystery, no proprietary inbox — when you call, you call the business directly.

Geographic expansion. We search your ZIP code first; if there aren’t enough listings, we widen to the county; then to the state. The current geographic bucket is shown at the top of every results page so you can see how far we widened the search.