Published criteria

Methodology

American Recognition Awards qualifies businesses with a published formula. Each scan uses Google Places as its data source.

Data source

Each scan requests Place Details from Google Places for the selected business. We use that response only to compute an ARA Score. Public winner and verification pages show the derived score and the scan date — not Google's raw rating or review count. Cached Google fields are deleted after 30 days.

ARA Score

A 5.0 from three reviews should not outrank a 4.7 from hundreds. We apply a Bayesian average:

score = (v / (v + m)) × R + (m / (v + m)) × C

R = Google rating returned for the place
v = Google review count returned for the place
m = 10 (prior weight)
C = 4.0 (prior mean)

Qualification

A business qualifies when ARA Score is at least 4.4 and the review count is at least 10. One award may be claimed per Google place per calendar year.