How we rank Rochester chimney sweep and inspection companies

Chimney work is a trade where the wrong hire has real consequences — an uninsured sweep who skips the written report, or a "$99 inspection" that turns into an unverifiable repair upsell, can leave you with a cracked liner or a lapsed insurance claim after a chimney fire. That risk is exactly why we don't rank by star rating alone. Every business in our directory gets a single composite score — the Roc Score — built from seven weighted factors. We publish the formula, the weights, and our data sources below so you can verify the ranking yourself instead of taking our word for it.

The formula

score = w1·googleRating + w2·googleCount + w3·yelpRating
      + w4·yelpCount    + w5·bbbAccredited + w6·recency
      + w7·serviceAreaOverlap

Where each factor is normalized to 0–1, then scaled to 0–100:
  w1 = 0.30  Google star rating (rating / 5)
  w2 = 0.20  Google review count (log-normalized — see below)
  w3 = 0.10  Yelp star rating (rating / 5)
  w4 = 0.10  Yelp review count (log-normalized)
  w5 = 0.05  BBB accreditation (1 = accredited, 0 = not)
  w6 = 0.10  Review recency (1.0 ≤30 days, 0.7 ≤90, 0.3 ≤365, 0 older)
  w7 = 0.15  Service-area overlap with our target Rochester suburbs

Review counts are log-normalized (ln(1 + count) / ln(501)) rather than used raw — otherwise a chimney company with 400 Google reviews would score roughly 80× higher than one with 5, which overstates the actual difference. The score always displays as a 0–100 number, never as stars — displaying an algorithmic score as a star rating risks tripping Google's self-generated-rating rich-result penalty, and it would also blur the line between "this is our ranking math" and "this is the business's actual customer rating," which stays visible separately on every listing.

Worked example

Two hypothetical Rochester chimney sweeps, run through the actual formula:

Business B has the "better" star rating — a perfect 5.0 — and still scores 33 points lower. That's the formula working as intended: a perfect rating on 9 reviews with no Yelp cross-check, no BBB accreditation, and coverage in only 3 of our 10 target suburbs doesn't carry the same statistical weight as an operator with 167 combined reviews across two platforms, third-party accreditation, and broad Rochester-area coverage. Neither business is disqualified — B could easily be a genuinely good, newer operator — but the score reflects verifiable signal, not just the headline star number.

Data sources

• Google Business Profile — primary source for review count + average stars + service area
• Yelp — secondary review signal where present
• BBB.org — accreditation status + complaint history (public records only)
• NY State business registry — verifies legal entity name + active status
• Business's own website — for service offerings + pricing where published

One limitation worth stating plainly: the Roc Score does not verify CSIA (Chimney Safety Institute of America) certification directly — that credential isn't published in a structured, scrapable public dataset the way BBB accreditation is. If CSIA certification matters to you (and for annual inspections, it should), confirm it directly with the operator or check CSIA's own certified-sweep locator before booking. We update business data weekly. If you see something stale, email connormeador@gmail.com.

What we DON'T do

• Pay-for-placement — no business pays to rank higher
• Reciprocal-link schemes — no "link to us, we'll link to you"
• Scraped review text — we link to original sources, we don't republish
• Fabricated certifications — CSIA status is never claimed on a business's behalf; see the data-source caveat above
• AI-generated "sample of their work" images tied to specific businesses