How we verify listings

What is published

Every installer and every build on this site is a row from the research files loaded into the database. Firms are not added from memory, and prices are not invented.

Each installer has a source link and a verified date. The source link is the page that was checked. The date on the listing is the date stored for that row. The footer reads the date from the loaded file.

Build rows are public posts. Most are from Reddit. The rest are from Golf Simulator Forum and one personal site. The source link on a build is that post. The post date is the date stored in the file, which is sometimes a full day and sometimes only a year.

Confidence

The file marks each installer high, medium, or low.

High and medium listings are published. High confidence is ordered first. Medium is still a checked listing with a source link. The word is the value in the file. This site does not add a separate rubric on top of it.

Low confidence is not published. Those rows are national sites. Their notes describe lead-gen style city pages, including sites that share a phone number. The rows stay in the database so the research record is complete. They are left out of city pages, search, and the sitemap.

Local, national, and city pages

national is a field in the file. A national firm can still have a city, such as a headquarters. That does not make it a local installer.

A city page is created only when a metro has at least four firms that are not marked national and are not low confidence. Metros under that line stay off the city-page list. The firms still have detail pages and still show up in search. Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, San Diego, Portland, San Antonio, and Sacramento are in that group in the current file.

What a field does not mean

brands_mentioned is text that appeared on the firm’s site. It is not proof they install or sell that brand.

featured is for a later sponsored placement. Every firm loaded from the file has it turned off. If a featured flag is set in the database, the next data load keeps it. Nothing is featured now.

A published price is the sentence stored from the firm’s own page, with a separate link to that page. Some sentences are labor-only installation fees. Some are whole-room packages. The sentence is shown in full so the number stays attached to what it covered.

Build costs

total_cost_usd is copied as published.

• A single number is used in medians.
• A range such as 3000-3500 stays a range. It is not turned into a midpoint for the median.
• A blank USD cell stays blank. Canadian-dollar notes are not converted.

cost_is_computed is blank on every row in the file that was loaded. A total is marked as summed only when that cell says so.

This build set is almost entirely DIY. It is the wrong sample to read as a typical professional installation. Published installer prices are quoted separately, in the company’s words.

Corrections and affiliates

The claim form on a listing does not send email and does not write to the database.

Gear names are text. They are not affiliate links. If a gear link is turned on later, it will be marked Sponsored, it will use rel="sponsored nofollow", and the page will link to the affiliate disclosure. The footer will say so too.