How we rank Rochester deck building and repair companies

Every deck builder in this directory gets a single composite score — the Roc Score — derived from a transparent, published formula. We rank contractors, not just list them, because a homeowner deciding who frames their deck and stamps their permit drawings deserves more signal than an alphabetical list.

The formula

score = 100 × clamp01(
  0.30 · googleRating    +   // Google stars, normalized 0–5 → 0–1
  0.20 · googleCount     +   // ln(1+count) / ln(501), capped at 1
  0.10 · yelpRating      +   // Yelp stars, normalized 0–5 → 0–1
  0.10 · yelpCount       +   // same log-normalization as Google
  0.05 · bbbAccredited   +   // 1 if accredited, else 0
  0.10 · reviewRecency   +   // 1.0 ≤30d · 0.7 ≤90d · 0.3 ≤365d · 0 older
  0.15 · serviceAreaOverlap  // fraction of the 10 tracked suburbs served
)

This is a weighted sum, not a Bayesian average — every factor is normalized to 0–1, multiplied by its weight, summed, then scaled to a 0–100 integer. Two weights are worth explaining for a trade like deck building specifically. First, review count is log-normalized(ln(1+count)/ln(501)), not linear — a two-person deck crew that pulls 15 permits a year will never rack up review volume the way a high-frequency service business does, so a straight review-count comparison would bury every small, competent builder under the two or three companies that also do siding, roofing, and gutters at volume. The log curve rewards a jump from 5 reviews to 40 far more than a jump from 400 to 800, which matches how much new information each additional review actually carries.

Second, service area overlap gets a real 15% weight— higher than BBB accreditation or Yelp's review count. That's deliberate: deck permitting, frost-line footing depth, and snow-load engineering all vary by Monroe County municipality (Pittsford's engineer-stamp requirement is not Penfield's, and Webster's lake-effect snow load isn't Henrietta's). A five-star contractor who has never pulled a permit in your town is a genuinely weaker match than one with slightly fewer reviews who builds there regularly.

Worked example

Builder B has a flawless 5.0 average but only 12 reviews, no Yelp presence, no BBB accreditation yet, and covers 3 of the 10 towns we track — none of that means B does bad work, it means B hasn't built up the breadth of public signal the formula rewards. Builder A's 4.8 average on 210 reviews across 8 towns, backed by BBB accreditation, earns the top score because every factor stacks in the same direction. Builder C shows the middle case: solid ratings, moderate volume, narrower coverage — a real, useful business that simply hasn't built the same track record yet.

Data sources

• Google Business Profile — primary source for review count + average stars + service area
• Yelp — secondary review signal where present
• BBB.org — accreditation status + complaint history (public records only)
• NY State business registry — verifies legal entity name + active status
• Business's own website — for service offerings + pricing where published

One caveat specific to a seasonal trade: deck construction in Rochester runs roughly April through November, with framing work sometimes pushing into early December. Review volume for deck builders naturally clusters in late summer and fall as projects wrap, so a contractor's recency score can dip in mid-winter even with a strong season behind them — that's expected, not a red flag. We update business data weekly. If you see something stale, email connormeador@gmail.com.

What we DON'T do

• Pay-for-placement — no business pays to rank higher
• 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 — only verifiable industry credentials are mentioned
• AI-generated "sample of their work" images tied to specific businesses — a deck is a structural product; showing a photo of work a builder didn't actually do is a real-world safety and trust issue, not just a marketing embellishment
• Structural or code claims we haven't verified against NY State Residential Code or Monroe County permit records — see the guides for cited code sections