Who researches our Top 5 lists, what we base them on, and how our editorial work stays separate from anything a business pays for.
TopChoice is operated by EightySix Digital and our recommendations are editorially curated by a New Zealand-based team. We research each trade in each city ourselves. No business writes, approves or reviews its own entry before it is published.
Our Top 5 lists reflect our opinion based on publicly available information. They are a starting point for your own enquiries, not a guarantee about any business.
A place in the Top 5 is not for sale. No business can buy inclusion, buy a higher position, or pay to have a competitor removed. We do not accept payment, gifts or services in exchange for an entry, a position or a favourable write-up.
Paying for a TopChoice Spotlight placement or holding a Verified Profile never changes our assessment of a business, its order in a list, or whether it appears at all. The full set of factors we weigh is set out in our ranking methodology.
Two things on this site are paid or applied for, and both are clearly marked.
The people choosing a Top 5 are not influenced by whether a business holds either. A business that pays for Spotlight can also appear in the Top 5 on the same page, but only when it earns that place on merit.
EightySix Digital builds and markets websites for businesses in New Zealand, and some of those businesses appear on TopChoice. Some businesses listed on TopChoice also hold paid Spotlight placements. Neither relationship earns a business a place in a Top 5, a better position in one, or protection from being removed from one. The research is done the same way for every business, whether we have a commercial relationship with it or not.
We use publicly available information. That includes a business's own website and published details, public customer reviews on Google and other platforms, public registers, trade association and licensing records where a trade requires them, and local reputation signals. We do not pay for private data about businesses, and we do not rely on a business's own marketing claims as proof on their own.
We use AI tools to help gather and summarise public information at the research stage. Every list is checked and decided by a person before it is published, and the judgement about who belongs in a Top 5 is always ours.
Lists are reviewed quarterly and can change at any time as businesses grow, improve, close or fall short. A business can lose its place without notice if the evidence no longer supports it, and new businesses are added when they do. Each page shows the month it was last updated.
We get things wrong sometimes. If you spot an error, tell us and we will check it. Our corrections policy explains what to send, how quickly we respond, and how a business can dispute its ranking or ask to be removed.
For the short version of how the three parts of TopChoice fit together, see how TopChoice works. Questions about this policy can go to topchoice@eightysix.digital.