Pest Sanity is an independent directory of commercial pest control providers across 100 US metros. We do not accept payment for inclusion or for placement order. Listings are sourced, scored, and ranked using the methodology below.
How we discover companies
For each metro we cover, we run a structured search across Google Maps and other public business directories using commercial pest control queries. Results are deduplicated by domain, then filtered to remove retail businesses, supply stores, and other categories that surface as noise in pest-related searches. This produces an initial candidate set per metro.
How we score commercial focus
Many pest control companies are residential-first and only handle commercial work as a sideline. Our scoring rubric flags companies that genuinely service commercial operations using the following signals:
- Dedicated commercial page on the company website
- Commercial industries served — explicit language about restaurants, food processing, healthcare, hospitality, warehousing, multi-family, education, or government
- Commercial certifications — QualityPro, GreenPro, AIB, SQF, BRC, HACCP, or related credentials
- Service area scope — multi-location operations or service areas that match commercial clientele
- Review signal — language in customer reviews that indicates commercial work (property managers, facilities directors, restaurant owners)
Companies are scored 0–5 on commercial focus. Only providers scoring 3 or above are admitted to the directory. Ones that score lower are filtered out at the candidate stage and never appear on the public site.
How we aggregate reviews
Star ratings and review counts displayed on the directory are sourced from Google Maps and reflect the lifetime totals on each provider's public Google Business Profile. We do not generate, edit, or solicit reviews.
For larger providers in our coverage area, we additionally run individual review text through a structured tagging pipeline that classifies what each review is about — pest type, service quality, professionalism, communication, scheduling, pricing, results — using a large language model. The aggregated tag distributions power the “What customers say” signals on individual company pages and the comparative badges on city pages (e.g. “Above average for communication”).
Tag distributions are relative to the metro average, not absolute. A provider rated above average for “professionalism” in Houston is above the local Houston baseline, not a national one. This avoids unfairly penalising providers in metros where customers tend to leave more critical reviews on average.
How we rank cities and states
City pages list every commercial provider with at least one verified active location in that metro. The default sort is by location count and review weight, not by editorial preference. Filtering by industry served or certification adjusts the visible set in real time but never changes the underlying data.
We require a city to have at least three commercial providers with valid metro-level data before publishing a dedicated city page. Cities below that threshold are folded into the parent state page so we do not surface near-empty pages.
Data sources
- Company information — Google Business Profile listings, company websites, and publicly-available state pest control license registries
- Reviews — public Google reviews, scraped via the Apify platform under their published terms of use
- Metro economic data — US Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP), 2022 release
- Climate and pest pressure — Open-Meteo historical climate data, 2023 release
- State licensing requirements — published rules from each state's pest control regulatory body
- Certifications — official directories from QualityPro/NPMA, GreenPro, AIB International, SQF, BRC, HACCP, and BBB
Update cadence
Company information and reviews are refreshed in batches. Major refreshes happen quarterly; targeted updates happen when we are notified of an error or when a provider materially changes their operations. The updated_at timestamp on each company record reflects the last verified refresh and is reflected in our XML sitemap.
What we do not do
- We do not accept payment for inclusion in the directory.
- We do not accept payment for higher placement on city or state pages.
- We do not write or solicit fake reviews.
- We do not hide or remove negative reviews.
- We do not allow providers to edit their own pages without verification.
How we make money
Visitors who request a free quote through the on-site lead form are matched with relevant commercial providers in their metro. Providers may opt to receive matched leads in exchange for a per-lead fee. This is the only commercial relationship we have with providers, and it does not affect ranking, inclusion, or visible placement on the directory. See our editorial policy for the full conflict-of-interest disclosure.
Errors and corrections
If a listing is wrong, outdated, or missing — or if you are a provider and want your information updated — see our editorial policy for the correction process. We aim to act on substantiated correction requests within ten business days.