Methodology
A plain-English explanation of where our data comes from, what every badge means, who can leave a review, and how search results are ordered. No black boxes.
Every clinician on this site is matched to an active record in the federal NPPES NPI Registry, maintained by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Listings without an NPI match are not published.
To claim a profile, a clinician signs in with an email tied to their NPI record or completes an out-of-band verification call. Claims are reviewed before the "Claimed & Verified" badge is granted.
We only count reviews from patients with a verified appointment or contact event recorded in our internal review-eligibility ledger. Every gated review displays a "Verified by appointment" label inline.
Imported third-party reviews (Google, Healthgrades, etc.) are shown for context with their source attribution but are excluded from the on-site rating and from ranking signals.
Every badge is a single, machine-checkable fact — no aggregate "quality scores."
Clinician (or authorized staff) has signed in and controls the profile. Edits are audited.
Identity matched against the NPPES National Provider Identifier registry. Required for every listing.
Board certification language detected in the clinician's education and training record.
Self-reported by the practice on the claimed profile; revalidated quarterly.
Offers virtual visits in addition to (or instead of) in-person care.
Computed from NPI enumeration date or self-reported graduation year.
Ranking factors
Results are deterministic. The same query returns the same order. Paid placement is always labeled and never replaces an exact specialty + city match.
| Weight | Factor | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Highest | Specialty + location match | Exact canonical-specialty match in the searched city, then within a 30-mile radius, then state-wide, then nationwide fallback. |
| High | Profile completeness | Photo, bio, services, procedures, education, insurance, phone, years of experience — each contributes to a 0–100 completeness score. |
| High | Verified review signal | Volume, average rating, and recency of reviews from the gated review ledger. Imported third-party reviews shown separately and not counted in ranking. |
| Medium | Visibility score | Headshot, 200+ char bio, 3+ Q&A, 3+ gallery items, NPI verified, 3+ verified reviews, ≥80% 24-hour lead response — see /dashboard. |
| Medium | Claimed status | Claimed profiles outrank otherwise-equal unclaimed registry entries because data freshness is higher. |
| Labeled separately | Featured placement | Paid Featured listings appear in a clearly labeled '★ Featured doctors' strip above the general list. They never displace an exact specialty + city match in the main results. |
Worked examples
Three real profile patterns. Each row shows what the doctor has done and the exact points it contributes to the 0–100 score — no hidden weighting.
NPI verified through registry match, just claimed the profile. No bio, no reviews, no Q&A yet.
15/100
Just claimed
Headshot uploaded, 240-char bio, services listed, board certified. Two verified reviews so far; responds to most leads within a day.
60/100
Strong
Complete profile: photo, 600-char bio, 5 services, 4 Q&A, 6 gallery items, 11 verified reviews, 92% 24-hour response rate.
100/100
Featured-eligible
Weights are fixed and identical for every clinician. Verified-review count and 24-hour lead-response rate keep the score sensitive to recent activity — a profile that goes silent loses eligibility for the Featured rotation until it re-engages.
15 questions across 5 topics. Each answer also ships as structured data so search engines can surface the exact question and answer.
Spot something wrong? Contact us or claim your profile to correct it directly.