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Our methodology, in full
Every plumber on FindAPlumberOC is independently scored on a 100-point system before we'll show them as verified — and we re-run the check every single night.
Last vetting run: July 22, 2026
Sites like Yelp, Angi, and HomeAdvisor list businesses that pay to appear — not businesses that have been independently verified. Listings are often years out of date, businesses may have closed, phone numbers go dead, and ratings can be gamed. There is no ongoing check.
We built an automated vetting system that runs every single night and scores each plumber across 8 live checks. If a business closes, its score drops and it gets flagged for removal. If a website goes down, we know. If no customer has reviewed them in a year, we flag it. You only ever see plumbers we can actually confirm are active.
Rating
Scaled from a 3.0 baseline — a higher live Google rating earns more points, capped at 30.
Review volume
Log-scaled against review count, so a business with real review history scores higher than one with a handful of reviews.
Operational status
We confirm the business is currently marked OPERATIONAL on Google — not temporarily or permanently closed.
Contact completeness
Phone (+6), physical address (+5), and a real website — not a Google Maps link — (+4) must all be present.
License on file
A license number confirmed via Google Business credentials or scraped directly from the plumber’s own website — never self-reported to us.
Availability
24/7 availability earns +5; a documented response time under 60 minutes earns +3.
Live website check
A real HTTP request to the business website, confirming it actually responds — not just that a URL is listed.
Recent activity
At least one customer review within the last 12 months. Ghost listings with no recent activity are flagged.
Only plumbers scoring 55 or higher (grades A, B, or C) are shown as verified listings. D and F grades exist in our data for internal tracking but are never displayed publicly.
Angi charges plumbers $100s/month to appear — no independent check
Yelp listings go stale — closed businesses stay live for years
HomeAdvisor sells your contact info to multiple contractors at once
We score each plumber on rating, reviews, license data, live website, and more — free to list, impossible to game.
No. Every plumber, regardless of subscription tier (Free, Featured, or Premium), goes through the identical automated scoring process. Paying for a Featured or Premium listing changes visibility and placement — it has no effect on the vetting score itself.
Every night at 2 AM Pacific, automatically, via a scheduled job. Scores are never static — if a business closes, its website goes down, or no one has reviewed it in over a year, the next nightly run catches it and the score drops accordingly.
They remain in our database for internal tracking but are not shown to visitors as vetted listings. Only plumbers scoring 55 or higher (grades A, B, or C) are displayed with a verification badge.
We check the business’s Google Business credentials first. If no license number is on file there, we scrape the plumber’s own website directly for license text (formats like "Lic #" or "C-36"). We do not accept self-reported license numbers submitted through our portal without verification.
Those platforms list any business willing to pay to appear, with no independent, ongoing verification. Listings can go stale for years after a business closes. Our system re-scores every plumber nightly using live checks against Google and the plumber’s own website, so closures, dead websites, and rating drops are caught within 24 hours.
See every plumber we've vetted across Orange County
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