What a verified badge actually means

Trust badges on directories are usually decorative. Ours is a claim about a specific action taken on a specific date, and it is worth being exact about what that claim is and is not.

What it means

A verified badge means one thing: somebody took the licence number the business published, put it into the official register for the relevant state, and the licence came back current for the class of work the business advertises. The date of that check is shown on the listing.

That is it. That is the whole claim.

What it does not mean

• It is not an endorsement. We have not used them, we have not inspected their work, and a current licence tells you nothing about whether they turn up.
• It is not a guarantee. A licence current in August can be suspended in September. The date on the badge is the date of the check and nothing after it.
• It is not insurance. Licensing and insurance are separate. Ask about insurance separately.
• It does not cover every class of work. A licence is for specific work. A verified general builder is not verified to do the electrical.

What the absence of a badge means

Less than people assume. A listing without a verified badge has not been checked. That is not the same as failing a check, and it is not the same as being unlicensed.

Most listings on this site were built from public sources without the business being involved yet. Verification generally happens when an owner claims their listing and gives us a number to check. No badge usually means nobody has been through that process, not that something is wrong.

When a check is run and the licence does not come back current, the listing does not get a badge and it does not get a dofollow outbound link. We do not publish a red cross next to a business's name on the strength of a register lookup that might have a data problem in it. We contact them.

Why the badge is tied to the outbound link

The outbound link to a business's own website is nofollow by default and becomes dofollow when the listing is claimed, complete and verified. That is deliberate, and it is the alternative to the reciprocal link arrangement the partner program page explains we did not build.

A dofollow link is us vouching for a site. We are prepared to vouch for a business whose licence we checked and whose profile is filled in by its actual owner. We are not prepared to vouch for a row we scraped off a public page, however accurate that row is.

The date is the important part

Every verified badge on this site carries the date of the check, and every listing carries the date its details were last read from a source. A badge with no date would be a claim with no expiry, which is a way of being wrong quietly for years.

If a date on a listing is old enough to bother you, treat it as old. That is what it is there for.