How we choose

Trust is the only thing a guide like this has. So here, in plain terms, is how a place earns a spot, how we keep the lists current, and how we make money without letting it touch the rankings.

How a place earns its spot

There’s no algorithm and no scoring spreadsheet dressed up as science. There’s a group of people who spend real time in Dublin and compare like with like. Broadly, we weigh five things:

• The core thing, done well. The food, the pint, the coffee, the cut, the job. Everything else is secondary to whether the main event is actually good.
• Consistency. A brilliant one-off doesn’t make a list. We look for places that deliver on a wet Tuesday, not just for the critics.
• Value. Not cheapness — value. A €4 flat white and a €90 tasting menu can both be worth every cent, or neither.
• Welcome. How you’re treated matters. Warmth, competence and the sense that they’re glad you came.
• The details. The room, the music, whether they answer the phone, whether the toilets are clean. The small things that add up to a good time.

How we actually check

We visit anonymously and pay our own way, like any other customer. For anything where safety or qualifications matter — the trades, in particular — we go further and check the paperwork: registration bodies, insurance and a track record of real jobs before anyone makes a list.

We don’t run reader-vote popularity contests, and we don’t lift copy from other sites. If we haven’t been, we don’t rank it.

How we keep it current

A guide is a promise that it’s still true. Chefs move on, standards slip and new places open every month, so we revisit and re-rank rather than publishing once and forgetting. Every guide carries a last-updated date, and if something changes — a closure, a big drop in standards — we update it quickly.

How we make money (and how we don’t)

Being independent doesn’t mean being free to run. We fund the guide in two clearly separated ways, and neither one buys a ranking:

• Featured listings and advertising. Businesses can pay to be promoted in clearly labelled spots — never inside the editorial rankings. Paying for an ad will never move a business up a list, and can’t get one onto a list it didn’t earn. More on that here.
• Affiliate links. Occasionally we link to a booking or a product and earn a small commission. It never costs you more, and it never decides what we recommend.

If a guide ever contains paid placement, we say so on the page. The default, and the vast majority of what we publish, is plain editorial.

Corrections

We get things wrong sometimes. When we do, we fix them openly rather than quietly. Email hello@businessindublin.ie and we’ll put it right.