This page explains how Accela builds its ranked Best service lists. It uses our live Best Ransomware Recovery Services list as the example — that list itself is not changed by anything written here.
What our Best lists are
Our Best lists rank service companies for modern business and IT teams. They have a national, remote-first focus: most of the services we rank help customers anywhere by phone, remote access, and shipped media, so location and street address are not ranking factors for these lists.
What we rank on: service model and scope
We rank companies by what they actually do and how they deliver it — service model and scope — not by popularity or advertising. That means:
- Remote, onsite, and lab recovery — how the service reaches the customer.
- Incident response and forensic scope — whether the company also investigates the attack, not just recovers data.
- Stated 24/7 availability — whether the company says it is reachable around the clock.
- Vendor-stated service models — for example, “no recovery, no fee” where the vendor itself states that model.
Facts, checked against each company’s own site
The details we show for each company — services offered, service models, availability — are checked against that company’s own website. If a fact cannot be verified from the company’s own site or a reliable source, it does not go on the list.
Google ratings: reported, never decisive
Where we show a Google rating for a service, it is reported only if verified from that service’s displayed Google profile. A rating never decides rank order — rank is decided by service model and scope, as described above.
List size
The number of entries on a Best list is not fixed at 10. It varies by topic, depending on how many services meet the bar for that category.
Monthly refresh: how lists stay current
On the 1st of each month, we refresh our Best lists. The process is:
- Health-check each live page first — if a page is broken, the date is never advanced on it.
- Recheck ratings once per service.
- Advance the “Last reviewed” label and the page’s modified date.
- Update llms.txt.
- Rebuild and purge the cache.
We never resubmit to an indexer on refresh.
Questions about our methodology? Contact us at [email protected].