How these lists are made

The lists are researched and published by Primortul LLC, a company based in Ankeny, Iowa. Each domain carries one list: one kind of firm in one place, from Des Moines out to the whole country.

Primortul also owns Fracs, a bench of senior marketing, sales, operations and finance people. On lists where Fracs does comparable work it appears once, in a card marked Featured, outside the ranked order. It is the only paid placement on any list, and it is always labelled.

A firm has to be operating today and doing the work the list is about. We confirm both from two places: the firm's own website, which has to be live and describe the work, and at least one independent source, such as a business journal, an award body, a trade directory, a chamber of commerce or a review platform.

Firms are found through industry directories, business press, award lists and the client rosters of firms already known to do the work. No firm asked to be listed, and none can pay to be.

Every fact on an entry was copied from a page we loaded: who leads the firm, where its office is, when it was founded, how many people it employs, the awards it has won, the case studies it publishes, and its pricing where the firm publishes pricing itself. Each specific claim links to its source.

When no source states a fact, the field stays blank. We do not estimate headcounts, guess founding years or fill in a leader's name from memory.

The homepage image on each entry is a capture of the firm's own site taken on the day of the check. It shows the site as a visitor saw it that day.

The order is editorial. We weigh four things, roughly in this order: how long the firm has been doing the work, the named clients it can show, its scale, and how clear its specialism is. A smaller firm with a sharp focus and named work can sit above a larger generalist.

Rankings are not for sale, and no firm is told its position in exchange for anything.

Every entry is re-checked each quarter. At each check we load the firm's site, confirm who owns and leads it, and capture its homepage. Firms that have closed, stopped doing the work or could not be confirmed are removed. Mergers, acquisitions and renames are noted on the entry and in the change log on that list.

If something on a list is wrong, or a firm that belongs on one is missing, write to lists@primortul.com with the domain of the list and a link to a source. Corrections that check out are made and recorded in that list's change log.

Firms can ask for their entry to be updated but cannot choose what it says. Every change still has to trace to a source.