How MyPoolsGuide rates pool companies

Every company on MyPoolsGuide is rated independently. The Rating is produced by our own scoring system from a mix of public records, the company's own published information and customer reviews we collect and read ourselves, recalculated every month and reviewed by our quality team each year. No company writes its own Rating, and no company can pay for one.

Each listing shows one number, the Rating, plus at most one city badge and the License verified mark when the state record supports it. That is the whole of it. No paid placement sits inside a ranked list anywhere on this site.

What goes into a MyPoolsGuide Rating?

Four things: Customer Satisfaction, Reliability, Licensing and Consistency. Our scoring system weighs them together and returns a single Rating out of 5. A company with a long, steady record of happy customers rates higher than one with a short record, even when the raw star average looks the same.

• Customer Satisfaction. The score customers give, weighted by how many of them stand behind it. Five stars from a handful of people is a smaller claim than a strong score from hundreds, and the Rating reflects that.
• Reliability. Whether the company actually turns up. We read customer reviews individually instead of counting stars, and score the question homeowners care about most: did they keep coming back, week after week? Reviews that say nothing either way are not counted as approval, and replies written by the company are excluded.
• Licensing. Whether the company matches an active Florida pool contractor license, checked against the state register rather than taken from the company's own word.
• Consistency. Whether customers are still writing about the company now, or whether the record went quiet a while back.

How those four are weighted, and the analysis that turns review text into a Reliability score, are proprietary to MyPoolsGuide. We do not publish them, for the same reason no ratings provider does: they are the work.

Can a company pay to rank higher?

No. Nothing about a company's Rating, its badges, its license mark or its position on any page is for sale, and it never has been. There is no arrangement under which a company can pay MyPoolsGuide for a better Rating or a higher place in a ranked list, and any featured listing the site ever shows will be labeled as one and sit apart from that list. A company that claims its listing gets to correct its own contact details and describe its services. It does not get to touch its Rating.

Companies are listed whether or not they know we exist. Most of the directory has never spoken to us. That is deliberate: a list that only contains companies who opted in is an advertising channel, not a rating.

What does Best Rated in a city mean?

Best Rated in {City} goes to the company holding the highest Rating among the companies that actually work out of that city. There is exactly one per city, and it is awarded by the scoring system, not chosen by anyone. It changes hands whenever the underlying data says it should.

A badge belongs to the city a company trades from, not every city it will drive to. A company can appear on several city lists because it covers the area, but it competes for a badge in one place only: the listed city nearest its own address. That is why a well rated company can top a list it appears on without holding that city's badge. A business running genuinely separate branches is a separate listing per branch, and each branch competes in its own city.

What is Our Pick?

Our Pick in {City} rewards turning up. It is the one badge that does not follow the Rating. It goes to the company whose customers, in their own words, most consistently describe it as reliable: booked, arrived, did the work, came back the following week. A company needs a substantial body of reviews that speak to reliability before it is eligible, so the badge is never given on a thin sample, and it always goes to a different company than Best Rated.

Reliability is scored from the review text itself, not from star ratings. The vocabulary that analysis uses is proprietary and is not published.

Why does a listing say Newly listed?

Newly listed means the company does not yet have enough customer reviews for us to publish a Rating with any confidence. The threshold is 15 reviews. It is not a judgment on quality, and every company starts there. Newly listed companies sit together at the end of each city list and pick up a Rating automatically once they pass the threshold. Neither badge can go to a Newly listed company.

What does License verified mean?

License verified means the company matches an active record in the Florida DBPR construction industry license file, the state register of Certified and Registered Pool and Spa Contractors. We check the state record rather than take the company's word for it, and the license number, type, holder and expiry appear on the listing.

Routine cleaning and chemical service do not require a contractor license in Florida. Repairs, equipment replacement and resurfacing do. A company without the mark is not being called unlicensed: it means no active state record could be matched to it with confidence. Disciplinary history is checked and would be noted on a listing if found.

Where does the data come from?

From publicly available business records, the companies' own published information, official Florida state licensing data, and a body of customer reviews that MyPoolsGuide collects and analyzes itself. Those inputs are combined by our own scoring system. The reviews we read, and the analysis we run on them, are ours; the Rating exists because of that work rather than being a copy of a number published elsewhere.

A company is only listed once at least two independent sources confirm it actually services pools. Supply stores, pool builders that do not service pools, and solar, plumbing or air conditioning contractors carrying a secondary pool category are excluded. Each city page lists up to 30 companies within reach of that city, best rated first. Listing descriptions are written by MyPoolsGuide from the data, never lifted from a company's marketing copy. Review excerpts are short, attributed by month, and never republished in full.

What can a company change about its listing?

A company that claims its listing can update its description, logo, services, service area, hours, phone number, website and email address, and can ask to be removed from the directory. Every change is recorded. A company cannot change its Rating, either badge, its license record, its review data or its position on any page. Those come from the data, and they are recalculated whether the company likes the result or not.

What is a Best in {City} award?

Best Rated in {City} is live all year and can change hands at any monthly refresh. Once a year that standing is fixed in place: the ten highest rated companies in each city receive a dated Best in {City} award for that year, which they are free to display on their own website and marketing. It is awarded on the same Rating as everything else on this site, so it cannot be bought and it cannot be requested.

A dated award reflects where a company stood in the year it was earned. It does not expire, and it does not carry forward: a company that wants the following year's award has to earn it again.

How often are Ratings reviewed?

Every month by the system, and once a year by hand. The directory is rebuilt from a fresh pull of the underlying records each month, and every Rating and badge is recalculated on that run, so a company can gain or lose a badge between refreshes. On top of that, our quality team reviews the standings once a year before the annual awards are issued. The current data was collected on October 1, 2026, and every listing shows the date it was last updated at the foot of the page.

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