The SWFR Score specification
Scored per business, per category, per city. A firm serving two cities gets two context scores. Every input names its source, and carries the date we observed it wherever our record holds one. Where a check has no date beside it on a profile, we do not hold one. The specification below is the whole rule, so the same inputs always produce the same order and anyone can work it out for themselves.
How the checking is done
Software does it. We pull the public files Florida publishes, match each business to the records in them, read what the business states on its own website, and take what a business sends us directly. Then we fact-check as far as those sources allow. Nobody scores a sample by hand and nobody telephones these businesses. What a person does here is sign a page before it publishes and decide whether a state record is firm enough to print.
Star ratings are not part of the score
Until 22 September 2026 four of the checks were built on a business's Google rating and review count. They are gone, and so is the short-lived line on each profile that showed today's Google rating. The terms behind those ratings do not let a directory like this one use them at all, and a score should rest on what we check ourselves. So no star rating moves anybody up or down a list, and no star rating from another site is shown here.
The checks
| # | Check | Group | Points | Points in legal and health | How it is scored | Missing data | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | License, tied to the service and location | Verification | 15 | 15 | An active license in the right class held by a practitioner or qualifier affiliated with this business at this location, confirmed on the regulator's current record within 90 days, scores 15. Active but affiliation unconfirmed scores 8 and is flagged. | Excluded from ranking, not scored | Florida Bar, DOH, DBPR, FDACS current records |
| 7 | Discipline history | Verification | 10 | 15 | No final disciplinary action in five years scores full points. A final action older than five years scores 6 and is disclosed. A final action within five years scores 0 and is disclosed with case number, date, disposition and source. A final revocation excludes. | Full points only where the regulator's file is complete for the profession and we have matched this business to a license to search it with. Otherwise 6 and flagged, and where no license is matched the check is not assessed and leaves the score entirely. | DBPR discipline files, DOH practitioner profiles, Florida Bar discipline records |
| 8 | Entity age | Verification | 5 | 5 | Years since the Florida entity filing, labeled entity filed rather than founded: under 2 scores 1, two to five scores 3, over five scores 5. Only a filing that is currently active counts. | 1 point, flagged. If nobody has searched the registry yet the check is not assessed and leaves the score entirely. | Sunbiz |
| 10 | Presence in the city | Local presence | 10 | 10 | A staffed location in the city scores 10, a location in the county with the city in its stated service area scores 6, serving the city from outside the county scores 2. | 2 points | Profile facts, regulator address, website |
| 11 | Website names its services and the cities it serves | Local presence | 5 | 5 | A working website that names the work it does and cities it serves scores 5, a website without those scores 2, no website scores 0. One website check covers the business, so it is not evidence that the site names one particular city. | 0 points | Website check, dated |
The legal and health adjustment
For lawyers and health providers the state's discipline record counts 15 points rather than 10, because the regulator's file is the more meaningful signal in those professions. Their scale is 50 points; every other category is out of 45.
Who can hold a ranked place
Only a business we finished every check on. If any one of the five is unfinished, the business keeps its page, its profile and its number, and it holds no ranked place, because we do not know enough about it to put it in an order against its neighbors. The same applies where a state record about it is unsettled, either because we cannot say for certain the record is that business's or because the business still has its week to reply.
This is deliberately a rule about the list rather than about the arithmetic. It means knowing less about a business can never move it up, because knowing less takes it off the list altogether.
Ties and short lists
Two businesses showing the same number are shown as tied. Where fewer than ten businesses can be ranked, the list is as long as it truthfully is and the title says so. Some lists are empty. A business we also sell marketing services to never holds a place in a top ten, whatever it scores.
We do not telephone these businesses
Until 23 September 2026 this page described a quarterly call to every business, scored out of 15 points. Nobody ever placed one. The check is gone rather than left sitting at zero, so the scale is 45 points instead of 60 and nothing on this site rests on a call we did not make.