When you search by name, you are searching against all primary and alternate business names that are entered into our system. When you search by category, you are searching against all Type of Business listings that are entered in the Accredited Business Directory.
When you select a Type of Business category from the list of categories that is presented to you, we return only those businesses that BBB has coded with the category you selected. Because there are a number of similar categories, you may want to try more than one if you don’t find what you need on the first try.
Your location acts as the center point for sorting results in geographic rings. We do not limit the results to only those that are in the city or ZIP code you searched.
The distances shown are based on the distance from the business to the geographical center of the ZIP code or city in your search location. Depending on where you live, this may or may not accurately represent the distance from you. Distances are sorted into geographic rings, and within these rings, businesses are sorted by relevance to your search criteria.
If there is no location associated with the search, the distance column will appear empty in the search results. This will be the case when your cookie does not indicate a location – for instance if you came to the search page directly without first visiting a BBB site, or if you started your BBB session at the Council’s site – or if you intentionally removed the location from the location box.
When your search does not include a location, the location box on the search results page will be empty, and no distances will display in the distance column. Results are sorted by relevance, and are not sorted into geographic rings.
Yes and no.
If you submit a search that’s all upper- or all lower-case, it will return results with any capitalization.
If you submit a mixed-case search, it behaves a bit differently. A capital letter in the middle of a word signals the search to look for both the exact case you searched, and also two words with the separation at the capital letter.
For example:
Searching eBay will search for the exact capitalization of eBay, along with the separate words E Bay or E-Bay. It will not find Ebay, EBay, EBAY or ebay.
Searching ebay or EBAY will find all of the capitalizations: ebay, eBay, EBay and EBAY, but will not find the separate words E Bay or E-bay.
Since business records can have a variety of spellings and capitalizations, if you are looking for a business whose official name is in mixed case we suggest you try first an all lower case search, and if you do not find the business you are looking for try again with the mixed-case business name.
Where our database supports, we pull together businesses with multiple locations into a single search result. For multi-location business search results, we display both the address of the location nearest you, and the headquarters location if there is one. The distance shown is the distance to the nearest location; the accreditation status shown is that of the headquarters.
BBB codes entities by Type of Business ("category") or Type of Charity. As you are entering your query, you can choose to select a Type of Business or Charity category, or you can simply continue typing and search by word in business or charity name.
In the Location box, we suggest city names for you to select as your typing. This is to save you time and prevent typos as you enter a city location.
When you select a category, you are filtering the results so that only those businesses or charities that BBB has coded with that specific category will display. Keep in mind there are many similar categories, so if you do not see the business or charity you are looking for, try a different category or try a name search.