How we score landscaper businesses in Ontario

What this page covers

The Ontario Landscaper Directory currently scores 200 landscaper businesses across the province, from lawn maintenance crews to snow clearing and backyard design and build outfits. This page explains exactly how that composite score (0-100) is built, why we weight the signals the way we do, and where the honest limits of the method sit.

The five signals, heaviest first

Every score is built from five measured signals. We list them here in order of weight because the order tells you what we think matters most when you're picking someone to work on your property.

• Sentiment, 28%. A synthesis of what recent reviews actually say: the praise, the complaints, and whether the same issue keeps coming up.
• Rating, 26%. The business's aggregate Google star rating.
• Volume, 20%. How many reviews the business has, log-scaled so ten reviews don't get treated the same as four hundred, but a large gap in volume still counts for something.
• Recency, 12%. How recently customers have actually left reviews. A crew that was great in 2019 and quiet since tells you less than one reviewed steadily this year.
• Completeness, 14%. Whether basic business information is actually listed: phone number, website, hours, and address.

Why sentiment carries the most weight

A star average is a single number, and single numbers hide patterns. Two landscaping companies can both sit at 4.4 stars, one with occasional scattered gripes about scheduling and one with a repeated, specific complaint about crews leaving debris or no-showing on snow removal days. The star average won't tell you which is which. Reading what recent reviews actually say is the only way to catch that difference, which is why sentiment gets more weight than the star rating itself. Rating still matters a lot, at 26%, because it's the aggregate judgment of everyone who left one. But sentiment is what catches the pattern the average smooths over, and that's the difference between a business that's consistently solid and one that's coasting on a few old five-star reviews.

Why volume, recency, and completeness matter

Volume is log-scaled deliberately. A business with 6 reviews and a business with 300 shouldn't be scored as if review count were irrelevant, but the difference between 150 and 300 matters far less than the difference between 5 and 50. Recency matters because landscaping is seasonal and crew quality can change year to year: a company that hasn't been reviewed in two years hasn't necessarily gotten worse, but there's less to go on. Completeness is the plainest signal: a listed phone number, working website, posted hours and a real address are basic signs of an operation that's set up to be found and reached, which matters when you're trying to book someone before the first frost or the first hot week of the season.

The honest limits

Businesses with few recent reviews get a low-confidence score, and we label them as such. A thin review history, even a positive one, doesn't carry the same weight as a deep, recent one, and we'd rather flag that than paper over it. We also don't republish reviews wholesale. We synthesize what they say and link out to Google so you can read the source yourself and form your own view.

Scores are earned, not sold

Every score on this site comes from the rubric above and the underlying data, full stop. It is never hand-edited. Where paid placement exists anywhere on the directory, it is always labelled clearly and it never changes a business's score. Any list where the picks or the order involved editorial review, such as our lawn care and maintenance best-of list, discloses that plainly on the page itself.

Who's behind this

The Ontario Landscaper Directory has published this resource since 2026. It started from a simple problem: when you need your lawn maintained, snow cleared, or a backyard rebuilt, you need someone with an actual track record, not scattered ads and inflated marketing claims. The directory is built from published review data and public business records, and the full database is refreshed monthly, with per-listing "last verified" stamps so you can see the maintenance is active rather than a one-time snapshot. Rankings are maintained by Diego Fischer, Managing Editor, who oversees how the rubric is applied across the database. You can reach the team through the enquiry form on the Ontario Landscaper website, or start from the directory home page to browse all 200 listings.