How we rank vets

Short version: Google gives us the business facts, Barkistan members give us the trust layer, and every card shows its working under “Why this vet?”. No clinic pays to be here, and nothing on this site calls anyone “the best vet in town”.

Two data sources, kept separate

• Google — name, address, phone, opening hours, rating, review count, photos and reviews come live from Google Places and are shown with attribution. We store only the Google Place ID as our identifier; we don't warehouse Google content.
• Community — experiences from pet owners — dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, whatever you keep: what they visited for, whether they'd go back, what went well, what didn't, and tags like “explains treatment” or “overcharged”. These come from the Barkistan WhatsApp groups and from public Facebook and Reddit threads, plus reports submitted on this site. Every one is reviewed and paraphrased by a human moderator before it is published, and each carries its source.

Where community reports come from

Reports are paraphrased from the Barkistan WhatsApp groups (with the admins' permission) and from public Facebook and Reddit threads where Pakistani pet owners discuss vets. We never publish raw messages. Names, phone numbers and addresses are removed; each report is a third-person paraphrase, marked with its source (“via WhatsApp / Facebook / Reddit”). Where we show a direct quote, it is anonymised and only shown if a moderator chose to. Reports submitted through the form on this site go through the same review. If a report reflects something you wrote and you want it removed, see privacy.

The Barkistan™ Score

The number on a Community Vetted clinic, out of 100. It is built only from what members reported — the Google rating is never an input — and it is not shown at all until a clinic has at least three reports, so a single glowing message can never become a score.

• Recommendation (50) — the share of reporting members who would go back.
• Evidence (25) — how many reports there are, on a log scale, so eight consistent reports beat one rave but eighty are not ten times better than eight.
• Recency (15) — full marks within a year, fading to nothing at three. Clinics change hands.
• Corroboration (10) — the same clinic praised on WhatsApp and Facebook and Reddit counts for more than praise from one place.

Every card shows the breakdown under “Why this vet?”. A clinic on the to-avoid list has no score, because a middling number next to a warning reads as reassurance.

The ranking

For a normal search, each clinic gets a score from 0 to 1 made of:

• Community Verdict (30%) — share of members who would recommend it, weighted by how many reports there are (a single glowing report counts for less than eight consistent ones) and how recent they are.
• Distance (24%) — only when you share your location. Full marks within 1 km, tapering to zero at ~15 km.
• Google rating (20%) — shrunk towards 4.2 in proportion to review count (Bayesian average). A 5.0 with 11 reviews does not beat a 4.7 with 700.
• Open now (10%) — computed locally from Google's weekly hours in Pakistan time.
• Service match (10%) — when you picked a service like Surgery or Grooming.
• Verification freshness (6%) — how recently we checked phone/hours/location.

“Community Vetted” — what it means

The green ✓ Community Vetted badge is not a rating. It means a Barkistan admin has read the member experiences we hold for that clinic (WhatsApp group discussions, Facebook and Reddit threads, and reports submitted on this site), judged them consistently positive, and approved the clinic. A high Google rating never triggers it; a clinic with no member evidence cannot get it. Admins can also mark a clinic rejected when the evidence is consistently bad — those clinics stay listed (they exist, and you should know what people said) but without the badge. The “Community Vetted” tab on each city page shows only approved clinics.

Vetted clinics get a modest boost in the default ranking (+0.08), because member evidence is what this site is for.

Trust labels

• Highly rated — Strong Google rating with a substantial number of reviews. (rule: Google ≥4.5 with ≥100 reviews)
• Recently verified — Phone, hours and location checked by us in the last 90 days. (rule: verified within the last 90 days)
• Mixed experiences — Community reports vary significantly. Read them before deciding. (rule: ≥5 reports and 30–70% recommend, or more would-not than would)
• Most would not return — Across the community reports we hold, most members said they would not go back.
• Limited data — Not enough community information yet. Google data only. (rule: fewer than 3 approved reports)

What AI does and doesn't do here

We use Claude to help moderators: to find clinic mentions in the WhatsApp export, paraphrase them without personal details, and suggest tags. It never decides a clinic's standing. Standing comes from actual member reports plus the transparent rules above, and a human approves every published report.

Limitations, honestly

• Community evidence is deepest for Islamabad and Rawalpindi (the WhatsApp group lives there); Lahore and Karachi come mostly from public Facebook and Reddit threads so far.
• A “Community favourite” with 6 reports is still 6 people. Read the notes.
• Opening hours are Google's and can be stale. Call before you drive.
• Prices are member-reported and dated. Confirm with the clinic.

Disagree with a ranking? The rules live in lib/ranking.ts; tell an admin and we'll discuss it in the group.