How Localist ranks agencies
A short, honest explanation of the formula behind every directory page — and what to do if your business doesn't make the list yet.
Two inputs, one score
Every agency on Localist is scored on the same two pieces of public information from its Google Business Profile:
- Rating — the 1.0 – 5.0 star average shown on Google.
- Review count — how many customers have actually left a review.
Rating alone isn't enough. A 5.0 average from one review tells you almost nothing; a 4.5 from 200 reviews tells you a lot. So we combine them into a single Localist score that rewards consistent quality proven across many real customers.
The formula
The score uses a standard credibility-weighted average — the same idea sites like IMDb use to keep low-vote items from dominating top-N lists.
with k = 50
Plain English: as the review count grows, the score climbs toward the rating itself. At 50 reviews, you've captured about 63% of your rating; by 150 reviews, about 95%. Below ~10 reviews the score stays well under the rating — Google's star average just hasn't had enough data to be trusted yet.
k is the credibility threshold. We picked 50 after testing against thousands of real listings — it's strict enough to keep one-review wonders out of the top spots, lenient enough that genuinely busy local agencies aren't punished for being newer than the giants.
Worked examples
Same formula, six different businesses:
| Rating | Reviews | Localist score | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5.0 | 1 | 0.1 | Brand new — one happy customer |
| 5.0 | 10 | 0.91 | Still early — small but glowing |
| 4.5 | 50 | 2.84 | Established with steady reviews |
| 4.7 | 142 | 4.43 | Well-known agency, lots of reviews |
| 4.2 | 500 | 4.2 | Mature business, broad track record |
| 3.0 | 5 | 0.29 | Mixed early signal |
How a directory page is built
For every (vertical, city) page — e.g. Web Development · Singapore — we score every agency we've ingested for that city, sort by score, and split the result into two visually-separate blocks:
Featured Partner placements (when offered) live in a strictly separate block above the organic Top 10. Paid slots never change organic position — that's a hard guarantee, not a setting.
Didn't make the list?
Most agencies that don't appear yet fall into one of these three cases. The good news is you have a path forward in each.
You're not ingested yet
We add agencies city-by-city as Localist expands. If you don't see your business on a directory page you should be on, use the Get listed button on that page — it walks you through a one-minute Google Business Profile sign-in and submits your business for staff review. You'll see your projected Localist score before you submit, so there are no surprises.
Your score is under the cutoff
A score under 0.0 almost always means not enough reviews yet, not bad reviews. The fastest legitimate path up is to ask happy past clients to leave a Google review — even ten more thoughtful reviews can lift a young agency from "below cutoff" into "also notable".
What we will not do: weight self-reported testimonials, paid reviews, or off-platform claims into the score. The formula only looks at what Google has publicly verified. That's the whole point.
You have proof beyond Google reviews
If your strongest credentials live somewhere else — a Clutch profile, a Trustpilot page, in-depth case studies — the request-to-add form lets you attach those as comma-separated links. Staff reviewers see them during manual review and can fast-track listings with strong off-platform evidence even when the raw Google score is borderline.
Why we publish this
Most directories don't tell you how their rankings work. That makes the list look authoritative but leaves agencies guessing whether the order is earned, paid, or arbitrary. We'd rather you be able to look at any Localist page, recompute the scores yourself, and either agree with the order or push back on it with evidence.
Questions or disputes: hello@konigle.com.