About Barrow / Who runs this
My name is Reade Milner. I write About Barrow, I grew up here on a Hoschton mailing address that sat on Barrow County land, and I graduated from Winder Barrow High School.
This page exists because I also run a marketing business, and you should hear that from me rather than find it out later.
An independent guide to businesses in Barrow County. Every ranking on this site comes from Google’s own numbers, the rating and the review count, run through a formula that is written down on the method page so you can check my work. I do not add a score of my own and no human judgment enters the order.
Right now the site makes no money at all. If that changes, this page changes first.
I work in marketing. Some of that work is for businesses outside the county and has nothing to do with this site. Some of it may eventually be for businesses that are listed here, helping them with their Google Business Profile, their website, or their local marketing generally.
That is a real conflict of interest and I am not going to pretend otherwise. So here is exactly how I handle it.
Placement is never for sale. Permanently. Not a discount, not a featured slot, not a promoted listing, not a favour for a friend. Nobody can buy a position on this site and nobody ever will be able to.
If a business here becomes a client of mine, its listing says so. A plain line on that business’s page telling you we have a commercial relationship. You should not have to take my word for my own independence. You should be able to see who is paying me and judge the rankings yourself.
The formula does not move. It is public, it is fixed, and it is the same for every business in every category. A client’s position can only improve the way anyone’s position improves, which is by actually earning more and better reviews from real customers.
What I will never do: buy reviews, write reviews, pay anyone for a positive review, screen customers so only the happy ones get asked, hide or suppress a negative review, or take a business down because it competes with a client. Some of those are against the law. All of them would make this site worthless.
Being listed is free and claiming is free, and neither one has ever cost anything or ever will. Claiming your listing does not change your ranking, and I will tell you that again on the phone if you ask.
A directory is only worth reading if you believe the person running it is not selling the answer. The only way I know to earn that is to publish the formula, publish the conflicts, and let you check both.
Plenty of local directories work the other way. They sell the top spot and do not mention it. I would rather lose the money than be one of those, because the moment this site is for sale it stops being useful to anybody, including me.
Tell me. reade@aboutbarrow.com. If you are right I will fix it and say so publicly on this page. If you think a ranking is wrong, the method page shows you how to check it against Google yourself, which means you do not need my permission to hold me to this.
Nothing to record yet. Anything that changes about how this site makes money, or about the rules above, gets added here with a date rather than quietly edited.
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One local business, told properly, plus what changed in the county that week. Free. No pitches, and I do not sell the list.
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