Every data point, ranking rule, and verification step — written down and dated.

BusinessesMap is a directory of local businesses. Each listing is built from publicly available business data, cross-checked against the source, dated, and ranked against other listings in the same city and category using a fixed, published rule set. Listings are free to claim and remove. We do not accept payment for placement, ranking, or removal — see §5.

A listing carries the Verified badge when all of the following are true at the most recent re-check. The badge disappears automatically if any check fails.

• Name, address, and phone number match the business's public profile byte-for-byte.
• The address geocodes to a real point within the claimed city boundary.
• Hours of operation are present and structured (open/close per weekday, plus any documented closures).
• At least one review is present from the public source within the last 12 months.
• The public source has not flagged the listing as permanently closed, duplicated, or relocated.

Important:“Verified” does not mean we have physically visited, called, or had business with the listed business. It means the data we display matches what the business publishes publicly.

Every field on a listing is sourced from a public business profile. We do not accept submissions from listed businesses, and we do not edit source data ourselves — if the source is wrong, the listing is wrong, and the correction workflow in §9 applies.

When you view a city × category page (e.g. Restaurants in Austin), every business on it is compiled from public business profiles. Use the sort control at the top of the list to order the page the way you want — by star rating or by number of reviews.

We don't sell position. There is no “featured” or “sponsored” slot in any city or category, and no business can pay to rank higher, appear first, or push a competitor down. The only signals we surface are the visible ones — a business's rating, how many people reviewed it, and how recent those reviews are — never anything a business tells us privately.

Listings that fail the checks in §2 are corrected or removed until the issue clears.

Refresh frequency by field is in §3. The most recent successful re-check is stamped on every listing as Last verified with a machine-readable timestamp.

A listing that fails three consecutive re-checks (typically: 21 days) is removed from the live index pending owner verification.

If you own a listed business, you can claim, edit, or remove your listing at any time, for free.

• Claim — verify ownership via the phone number or email on the public profile; verification takes ~60 seconds.
• Edit — update hours, photos, services, and contact info. Source-derived fields stay in sync with the public profile unless you opt out.
• Remove — request full removal at any time. Removals are honoured within 24 hours of ownership verification and stay removed unless you ask us to re-list.

If a listing is wrong — incorrect hours, closed business, wrong phone, duplicate, anything — report it and we'll re-verify against the source. We respond within 2 business days; most corrections ship the same day.

Persistent inaccuracies, content removals under DMCA, or privacy requests have their own routes — see DMCA and Privacy.