How we rank Rochester auto body shops

Every shop in our directory gets a single composite score derived from a transparent, published formula — not a single star rating, and not a manual editorial ranking. We publish the exact weights and our data sources below so you can verify any shop's position yourself.

The Roc Score formula

score = round(100 × clamp(Σ (weight × factor), 0, 1))

Factor          Weight   What it measures
──────────────  ──────   ─────────────────────────────────────────────
Google rating     30%    Star rating, normalized 0–5 → 0–1
Google count       20%    Review count, log-normalized (diminishing
                          returns past ~500 reviews)
Yelp rating        10%    Star rating, normalized 0–5 → 0–1
Yelp count         10%    Review count, log-normalized
BBB accredited      5%    1 if accredited, 0 if not
Review recency     10%    1.0 if ≤30 days, 0.7 if ≤90, 0.3 if ≤365,
                          0 if older or unknown
Service area       15%    Fraction of target Rochester-area suburbs
overlap                   this shop actually serves

This is the live formula in our scoring engine, not a simplified summary — the source is src/lib/scoring/roc-score.ts and the current version is 2026-05-16-v1. Two of the seven weights are worth explaining, because they're not the obvious “just average the stars” approach: review counts are log-normalizedrather than linear, so a DRP shop processing hundreds of insurance-referral repairs a month doesn't automatically outrank a smaller independent shop on volume alone — high transaction count in this industry is often a function of carrier steering relationships, not organic reputation, and Roc Score deliberately caps how much raw volume can move the needle. Service area overlap carries more weight (15%) than it typically would in a directory for a category people can shop around for at leisure, because a collision usually leaves a car undrivable more than a few miles — the highest-rated shop in Monroe County is a worse real answer than a strong shop that actually covers the suburb where the accident happened, whether that's Webster, Irondequoit, Henrietta, or Penfield.

Worked example

Shop A wins by a wide margin — 90 vs. 50 — despite Shop B posting a flawless 5.0 average, because A's rating is backed by real depth across two platforms, BBB accreditation, and coverage of nearly every target suburb, while B's perfect score rests on six reviews and a narrow service radius. This is the same reason a five-review shop can't leapfrog an established operator by asking a handful of friends for reviews: the formula rewards breadth and coverage, not just the average.

Data sources

• Google Business Profile — primary source for review count, average stars, and service area
• Yelp — secondary review signal where present
• BBB.org — accreditation status and complaint history (public records only). For auto body specifically, BBB complaints skew toward billing and insurance-supplement disputes rather than pure workmanship, which is why we treat accreditation as a real but narrow signal rather than a dominant one
• NY State business registry — verifies legal entity name and active status
• Business's own website — for service offerings and pricing where published

We update business data weekly. If you see something stale, email connormeador@gmail.com.

What we DON'T do

• Pay-for-placement — no shop pays to rank higher
• Weight Direct Repair Program (DRP) status — being on an insurer's preferred-shop list reflects a negotiated carrier relationship, not independently verified customer satisfaction, so it plays no role in the formula
• Reciprocal-link schemes — no "link to us, we'll link to you"
• Scraped review text — we link to original sources, we don't republish
• Fabricated certifications — I-CAR, ASE, and OEM-specific credentials are only mentioned where independently verifiable, and we link to the verification source (like i-car.com/find-a-shop) rather than asserting a shop's status ourselves
• AI-generated "sample of their work" repair or paint images tied to specific shops