How we score Lexington, SC landscapers

The Lexington SC Landscaper Guide currently scores 93 landscaping businesses in and around Lexington. Every score is a composite built from five measured signals pulled from public review data. Nobody pays to move up the list, and nobody on our team hand-adjusts a number because they like a business. What follows is exactly how the math works and where it falls short.

The five signals, heaviest first

Each business gets a score from 0 to 100, built from these weighted parts:

• Sentiment, 28%. A synthesis of what recent reviews actually say, praise and complaints alike, not just the star they left.
• Rating, 26%. The business's aggregate Google star rating.
• Volume, 20%. How many reviews exist, log-scaled so that 200 reviews don't count ten times more than 20, but still count for more than 3.
• Recency, 13%. How recently customers have actually left reviews, because a crew that was great in 2019 may not be the same crew today.
• Completeness, 13%. Whether the business lists a working phone number, website, hours, and address, the basics of being easy to actually hire.

Why sentiment carries the most weight

Star averages flatten everything into one number, and that number can hide a pattern. Two landscaping companies can both sit at 4.4 stars, but one of them has a string of recent reviews all mentioning the same missed appointments or a crew that damaged a fence, while the other has scattered, unrelated gripes. The star average treats those two businesses identically. Reading what reviews actually describe, irrigation work praised repeatedly, mowing crews showing up late, quotes that changed after the job started, is the only way to catch that difference. That's why sentiment is weighted higher than the raw rating itself: it's the signal that reflects what's really happening on recent jobs, not just a rounded average.

Why the other signals matter

Rating still matters because it's the most direct customer verdict available, and it's weighted second for that reason. Volume matters because a 5.0 average built on four reviews tells you very little about consistency, while the log scale keeps a handful of reviews from being unfairly outmatched by a company that's simply been around longer and racked up hundreds. Recency matters because landscaping crews change, ownership changes, and quality six months ago isn't a guarantee today. Completeness matters in a practical sense: a landscaper who lists real hours, a working phone line, and a website is simply easier to vet and hire, which is part of what makes a listing useful to someone comparing options.

The honest limits

This system only works as well as the data behind it. A business with few recent reviews gets a low-confidence score, and we label it as such on the page, because a handful of reviews from a year with no new activity can't reliably tell you how a company performs now. We synthesize themes from reviews rather than republishing them word for word, and we always link back to Google so you can read the source reviews yourself and form your own view.

What never changes the score

Scores are earned strictly from this rubric and the underlying data. They are never edited by hand. Where paid placement exists anywhere on this site, it is always labeled clearly and it never touches the score itself. If any list's picks or order were shaped by editorial judgment rather than the rubric alone, that gets disclosed right on the page. You can see the rubric applied to a curated set of standouts on our lawn care and maintenance best-of list, or head back to the directory home to browse all 93 businesses.

Who maintains this

Petra Kowalski, Content Lead, maintains the rankings and oversees how the rubric is applied across the guide. Questions about a specific score or a business that seems miscategorized should be directed through the site's contact channel, and Petra reviews those cases against the same data every other listing is scored on.