How we score Rock Hill painters

This page explains how we arrive at the composite score (0-100) attached to each of the 72 painter businesses covered in the Rock Hill, SC Painter Guide. The method is the same for every business on the site, whether it's a one-person operation working out of a truck or a larger crew that handles whole-neighborhood repaint jobs. Nothing here is guesswork: every score is built from measured signals tied to that business's own review history and listing data.

The five signals, heaviest first

We combine five signals into one weighted score. They're listed here in order of how much they count.

Sentiment: 28%

Sentiment is a synthesis of what recent reviews actually say, not just the number attached to them. It carries the most weight on purpose. A star average can hide a lot. Two painters can both sit at 4.5 stars while one has a string of recent reviews mentioning the same problem, like overspray on trim, no-shows on the scheduled start date, or a final coat that didn't match the sample. Reading what customers actually wrote is the only way to catch a pattern like that before you hire someone. We synthesize themes across recent reviews rather than republishing individual quotes, and we link out to the source on Google so you can read the originals yourself.

Rating: 26%

The Google aggregate star rating is still one of the fastest signals for overall satisfaction, so it's weighted second-heaviest. It's a blunt instrument on its own, which is why it never stands alone in our scoring, but it reflects a real volume of customer judgment and shouldn't be ignored.

Volume: 20%

A rating built on five reviews and a rating built on three hundred reviews don't carry the same weight, even if the number is identical. We log-scale review counts so that going from 5 to 50 reviews matters a lot, while going from 300 to 350 matters much less. This keeps a handful of enthusiastic reviews from outscoring a painter with a long, consistent track record.

Recency: 12%

A painter who was excellent in 2019 may have changed crew, ownership, or pricing since. Recent reviews tell you how the business is performing now, so how recently customers have posted factors into the score.

Completeness: 14%

We check whether a business lists a phone number, a website, hours, and an address. A painter who makes it easy to get a quote and confirm details is doing basic things right, and that's worth something when you're trying to reach someone about a job.

Where the score falls short

Businesses with only a few recent reviews get a low-confidence label attached to their score. A score built on three reviews from two years ago simply doesn't tell you as much as one built on sixty reviews from the past year, and we say so on the page rather than presenting both with false equivalence. We also don't publish or paraphrase reviews as if they were our own testimonials: everything is a synthesis, and the source is always one click away on Google.

What never changes the score

Scores come from this rubric and the underlying data, full stop. Paid placement, where it exists on the site, is always labelled clearly and has zero effect on a business's score or its position in a ranked list. Where a list's picks or order involved editorial judgment rather than the rubric alone, that's disclosed directly on the page, for example on our interior painting best-of list.

Editorial oversight

Farah Whitfield, Editorial Lead, maintains these rankings and the scoring process behind them. Farah reviews how the rubric is applied across all 72 listings and signs off on any page where editorial judgment plays a role beyond the automated score. If you spot a business that seems out of date or think a score doesn't reflect its current reviews, that's the kind of thing Farah's oversight is meant to catch.

You can start browsing from the home page or head straight to a ranked list for a specific type of work.