How we vet
installers.
Every installer on GetPPF went through the same pipeline — Google Maps seed, two rounds of website classification, a manufacturer cross-check, then photo and review enrichment. We didn't hand-pick anyone. We didn't take a fee for placement. Below is the funnel, the cert grades, and what the numbers look like today.
From 1,160 candidates to 408 profiles.
25 UK cities × 7 PPF/ceramic search terms, top 30 Google Maps results each. No paid placements pulled in.
Dropped: MOT centres, dent repair, pure valeting, duplicates across city radius.
Homepage + /services + /about crawled. Must explicitly install PPF or wraps — keyword density, brand mentions, badge images.
Final cut: trading status confirmed, contactable email, ≥3 Google reviews. Live as of 17 May 2026.
Matched against the brands' own lists.
For every survivor we ran a three-pass match against the manufacturer's official UK installer locator — XPEL (123 entries), STEK (35), SunTek, Llumar. Match order: domain (strongest), phone, then fuzzy-name on company name with a 0.78 similarity floor. A hit promotes the installer to the strongest cert tag we issue (manually_verified); a miss falls through to the weaker website-signal tiers below.
match_brand(installer, locator): if domain in locator.domains: return "manually_verified" if normalized(phone) in locator: return "manually_verified" if fuzz_ratio(name, locator) > 0.78: return "manually_verified" if badge_image_in_html(installer): return "badge_detected" if "<brand>-certified" in body: return "website_explicit" return next_tier_or_none()
Composite, 0–100, weights visible.
| Review count + rating | 45% |
| Brand certification source | 20% |
| Profile completeness | 10% |
| Photo evidence (≥10 work photos) | 10% |
| Instagram engagement (post freshness) | 10% |
| Website depth (services + pricing pages) | 5% |
| Total | 100% |
Tier cutoffs: accredited ≥ 80 · verified ≥ 60 · basic ≥ 30. Anything below 30 is held back from the public directory until a website re-crawl or claim refreshes the signals.
Where each cert tag comes from.
| Source enum | Confidence | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| manually_verified | Highest | On the brand's official locator. Cross-matched by domain, phone or fuzzy-name (≥0.78). |
| badge_detected | High | Brand badge image embedded in installer site HTML. |
| website_explicit | Medium | Site body literally claims "X-Certified Installer". |
| gmb_ranked | Low | Ranks on Google Maps for "[brand] certified installer" near them. |
| mentioned | Lowest | Brand name appears in body copy. Films may or may not be installed. |
On profile pages the source is shown as a tooltip on the badge. Listing a brand without a source is impossible — every brand chip is tied to one of the five enums above.
One named editor owns every ranking call.
Every tier decision, trust-score recalculation and pulled listing runs through one named editor: Chris Stott, Editor. The author profile lists the topics covered, prior published work, the disclosure policy and the route to flag a ranking dispute. If a brand badge looks wrong, a tier looks unjust or a competitor has been buried, the email address on that page is where to push back — not a contact form into the void.
We don't take installer commission, and the premium tier (Q3 2026) will fund tools — lead routing, analytics, photo upload — not visibility. Paid placement never replaces an organic ranking; where featured slots exist they're labelled inline. Quote requests go direct to the one installer the buyer picked — never broadcast to a bidding panel, never resold. Reviews are pulled unfiltered from Google; installers can reply but cannot make one disappear. If any of that ever stops being true, it stops being GetPPF.