How MyPoolsGuide rates pool cleaners
MyPoolsGuide shows one number per company, the Rating, plus at most one badge and a license mark. The Rating is a company's Google rating pulled toward the category average in proportion to how few reviews sit behind it, with a 15-review minimum. Best Rated goes to the highest Rating in each city. Our Pick goes to the company whose customers most often say it turns up, week after week. Nothing on a listing can be bought, and owners cannot edit any of it.
How is the Rating calculated?
The Rating blends a company's Google rating with the average across every confirmed pool cleaning company in the directory, 4.55. The more reviews a company has, the more its own rating counts. With 20 reviews the two carry equal weight. A company with 400 reviews at 4.9 keeps 4.9. One with 16 reviews at 5.0 shows 4.8, because five stars from sixteen people is a smaller claim than five stars from four hundred.
The formula, with R the Google rating, v the number of reviews, C the category average and m the weight of the prior:
Rating = (v / (v + m)) × R + (m / (v + m)) × C m = 20, C = 4.55
It moves in both directions. A company rated below 4.55 on Google displays a little higher here, and a company with a perfect score from a handful of reviews displays a little lower. Ratings are shown to one decimal. Review counts are Google's, taken at the most recent refresh.
| Google rating | Reviews | Rating shown |
|---|---|---|
| 4.9 | 400 | 4.9 |
| 5.0 | 16 | 4.8 |
| 5.0 | 60 | 4.9 |
| 4.3 | 25 | 4.4 |
| 4.0 | 15 | 4.3 |
Why does a listing say Newly listed?
Newly listed means the company has fewer than 15 Google reviews, so MyPoolsGuide does not show a Rating for it. It is not a judgment on quality; every company starts there. Newly listed companies sit together at the end of each city list, ordered by review count, and they graduate to a Rating automatically at the next refresh once they pass 15 reviews. Neither badge can go to a Newly listed company.
What does Best Rated in a city mean?
Best Rated in {City} goes to the company with the highest Rating among every rated company on that city's page. When two companies sit within 0.05 of each other, which is inside rounding noise, the one with the larger body of reviews wins. There is exactly one Best Rated per city. A company that serves two cities can hold it in both, and each city page shows only that city's badge.
What is Our Pick?
Our Pick in {City} rewards showing up. Every customer review is read for one question, did the company keep turning up, and scored positive, negative or silent. Silent reviews are dropped rather than counted as approval, and owner replies are excluded because they are the company describing itself. That reliability score carries 75% of the badge. The other 25% is review velocity, the reviews received in the last twelve months against the median for that city.
Both parts are converted to a percentile rank within the city before they are combined, so a large chain cannot win on volume alone and a tight cluster of scores is not decided in the third decimal. A company needs at least 10 reviews that speak to reliability before it is eligible, so the badge is never awarded on a thin sample. Our Pick always goes to a different company than Best Rated. The list of words and phrases that count as positive or negative is the analysis itself and is not published.
| City | Companies listed | Best Rated | Our Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tampa | 30 | Chinchillin Pool Service -Tampa | Grand Vista Pools |
| St. Petersburg | 30 | POOLSEYE | Blue Science Pool Service |
| Clearwater | 30 | Chlorine King Pool Service | Sunny Blue Pros Pool Cleaning |
| Largo | 30 | Chlorine King Pool Service | Sunny Pool Care of Seminole |
| Brandon | 30 | Family First Pool Service | Blue Pool Expert of Brandon |
| Riverview | 30 | Family First Pool Service | Blue Pool Expert of Brandon |
| Palm Harbor | 27 | Sunny Blue Pros Pool Cleaning | The Blue Pool Service |
| Sarasota | 30 | On-Time Pool Service, Inc. | Bright Pool Care & Cleaning |
| Bradenton | 30 | Manny's Pools LLC | Flow Pool Services |
| New Port Richey | 30 | Pasco VIP Pools | The Blue Pool Service |
What does License verified mean?
License verified means the company matches an active record in the Florida DBPR construction-industry license file, the state register of Certified and Registered Pool/Spa Contractors. The match is made by the license number on the company's own website, or by name and location where no number is published, and the license number, type, holder and expiry are shown on the listing. 56 of the 345 confirmed pool cleaning companies carry the mark.
Routine cleaning and chemical service do not require a contractor license in Florida. Repairs, equipment replacement and resurfacing do. A company without the mark is not being called unlicensed; it means no active DBPR record could be matched to it with confidence. Disciplinary history from DBPR is checked and would be noted on a listing if found.
Where does the data come from?
Three sources. Google Business Profile provides the business universe, ratings, review counts, categories, hours and photos. Each company's own website provides its services, service area and any license number it publishes. The Florida DBPR license file provides the license record. On top of that, MyPoolsGuide collected 6,060 customer reviews from 152 companies, up to 50 of the most recent per company, to compute reliability and velocity.
A company is only listed once at least two independent sources confirm it actually cleans pools. Supply stores, pool builders that do not service pools, and solar, plumbing or air-conditioning contractors carrying a secondary pool category are excluded. Each city page lists up to 30 companies within reach of the city, best Rating first. Descriptions on listings are written by MyPoolsGuide from the data, never taken from marketing copy. Review excerpts are short, attributed by month, and never republished in full.
What can a company change about its listing?
An owner who claims a listing can update the description, logo, services, service area, hours, phone number, website and email address, and can ask for the listing to be removed. Every change is recorded and goes live within minutes. An owner cannot change the Rating, either badge, the license record, the review data or the company's position on any page. Those come from the data and are recalculated at every refresh.
How often is the data refreshed?
The directory is rebuilt from a fresh pull of Google, the company websites and the DBPR file each month, and every Rating and badge is recalculated on that run. A company can gain or lose a badge between refreshes. The current data was collected on September 5, 2026, and each listing shows the date it was last updated at the foot of the page.