How we score landscape designers in Charlotte Metro
Charlotte Deck Builder Guide currently scores 180 landscape designer businesses across the Charlotte Metro area. This page explains what goes into that score, why we weight things the way we do, and where the method falls short so you can read the rankings with the right amount of trust.
The five signals, heaviest first
Every business gets a composite score from 0 to 100, built from five measured signals. Each one pulls from public review data and business listing details, never from a form a business fills out about itself.
| Signal | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | 28% | A synthesis of what recent reviews actually say: recurring praise, recurring complaints, and how consistent the experience sounds |
| Rating | 26% | The Google aggregate star rating |
| Volume | 20% | How many reviews exist, log-scaled so ten reviews don't compete evenly with four hundred |
| Recency | 10% | How recently customers have left reviews |
| Completeness | 16% | Whether phone, website, hours, and address are all listed and accurate |
Why sentiment carries the most weight
A star average is a single number, and single numbers hide patterns. Two landscape designers can sit at the same 4.3 rating while one has a clean spread of reviews and the other has a cluster of recent complaints about the same problem, missed install dates, a design that didn't match what was sold, plants that died within weeks. The stars alone won't tell you that. Reading what people actually wrote, and looking for what repeats, is the only way to catch it, which is why sentiment is weighted above the star rating itself rather than folded into it.
Why the other signals matter
Rating still matters because it's the fastest signal a homeowner sees and it reflects hundreds of individual judgments. Volume matters because a 5.0 average from three reviews tells you almost nothing next to a 4.6 average from three hundred, so we log-scale it rather than let raw counts dominate. Recency matters because a landscape design business is only as good as its current crew, current pricing, and current backlog. A company that was excellent three years ago under different management or staffing isn't guaranteed to be excellent now. Completeness matters in a plainer way: a business that lists a working phone number, a real website, accurate hours, and a physical address is easier to vet and easier to actually hire, and that basic transparency is worth something in the score.
The honest limits
This method has real boundaries and we'd rather state them than paper over them. A business with only a handful of recent reviews gets a low-confidence score, and we label it as such on the listing. Small sample sizes swing hard, and we don't want a business with three reviews looking equivalent to one with three hundred just because the average happens to match. We also synthesize review themes rather than republish full review text, and every listing links out to Google so you can read the original source yourself and judge it firsthand.
Scores are earned, not edited
Scores come from this rubric and this data, full stop. They are never adjusted by hand after the fact. Where paid placement exists anywhere on this site, it is always labeled clearly as paid and it never changes a business's score or its position in the rankings. If any list on this site reflects editor-reviewed picks or ordering rather than pure scoring, that is disclosed directly on the page, such as our best residential landscape design list.
Who's behind this
Charlotte Deck Builder Guide is published by Great Work Research, an independent publisher founded in 2025 to help homeowners in the Charlotte area choose reliable local deck and landscape professionals. We work from public business records, verified customer reviews, and market data, and we don't accept payment to place a business higher in a ranking. Editorial oversight of these rankings sits with Rod Burnett, Lead researcher. Data is refreshed monthly, and each listing carries a "last verified" stamp so you can see the maintenance is active rather than a one-time snapshot. You can see more about the publisher and its approach from the Charlotte Deck Builder Guide home page, visit reallygreatwork.com, or reach the team directly at info@reallygreatwork.com.
FAQ
- How often is the data updated?
- Monthly. Each listing also shows a last verified date so you can see when it was last checked rather than assuming it's current.
- Can a business pay to improve its score?
- No. Scores come only from the weighted signals described on this page: sentiment, rating, volume, recency, and completeness. Paid placement, where it exists on this site, is always labeled and never affects the score.
- Why does a business have a low-confidence label?
- It means the business has too few recent reviews for the score to be reliable. Small review counts can swing sharply, so we flag them rather than present them with the same confidence as businesses with a large, recent review base.
- Do you show the actual review text?
- We synthesize recurring themes from recent reviews rather than republishing them in full, and every listing links back to Google so you can read the original reviews yourself.