How a page here gets made.
You are about to make a four or five figure decision partly on what you read here. The other methodology pages explain how we arrived at a particular number or rank. This one explains how a page gets made at all — which is the thing that decides whether the rest is worth believing.
Every content page on HomeMatchup clears seven stages: commissioned against a real homeowner decision, researched against a ranked source hierarchy, drafted answer-first in plain English, reviewed for technical accuracy, reviewed separately for cost accuracy, signed off editorially, then dated and queued for re-check. A named author and a named reviewer appear on the finished page, and every figure carries the source it came from and the date we pulled it.
Seven stages, and who owns each one.
Naming the owner is the point. A process nobody is accountable for is a diagram.
Commission — from a decision, not a keyword
A page starts with a decision a homeowner has to make, and the brief is written backwards from it. Someone choosing between architectural and three-tab shingles needs a different page from someone whose ceiling is dripping tonight, even though both searches contain the word "roof". Search data tells us which decisions are common. It does not get to decide what the page concludes.
Output: A brief naming the decision, the reader's situation, and the questions the page must answer to be useful.
Accountable Priya Sharma Senior Content Strategist & Editor Research — sources before sentences
Sources are gathered and read before a word is drafted, in the order of the hierarchy below. Where the sources disagree — and on price they routinely do — the disagreement goes into the page rather than getting averaged away into a single confident number.
Output: A source list with a retrieval date against every figure that will appear.
Accountable Olivia Carter SEO Content Optimization Specialist Draft — the answer in the first paragraph
Homeowners arrive mid-problem, often on a phone, often late at night. So the answer goes at the top and the detail follows for whoever wants it. Trade vocabulary — decking, underlayment, ice-and-water shield, valley flashing — is either explained where it appears or replaced.
Output: A draft where every number carries its source inline.
Accountable Aisha Rahman Senior Copywriter Technical review — true on paper, wrong on a roof
The specific failure this catches is the claim that is technically accurate and would still cost a homeowner money: the material that performs on a 6:12 pitch and fails on a 3:12, the repair that is fine everywhere except a freeze-thaw climate, the right sequence of work described in the wrong order.
Output: Corrections, or a cut. Claims that cannot be supported are removed rather than softened.
Accountable Michael Thompson Senior Home Improvement Reviewer Cost review — the range, and where it came from
Every figure is checked against the dataset it came from and the date it was retrieved. A page that quotes a single national average does not pass this gate: nobody lives in the national average, and one number gives a reader false precision at exactly the moment they need to recognise an outlier quote.
Output: A published range, the factors that move you within it, and a dated source beside it.
Accountable Sarah Williams Cost & Technical Review Lead Editorial sign-off — and the honesty gate
The last read applies the rule that costs us the most traffic: where something could not be sourced properly, the section is left out rather than filled with a plausible guess. Several categories on this site are visibly thinner than a competitor's for exactly that reason.
Output: Publish, or send back. A page can be blocked at this gate by anyone at stages 04 or 05.
Accountable Emma Collins Head of Content Publish, date, and re-check
The review date is printed on the page so you can judge whether it is stale instead of trusting that it is not. Material prices move, codes change, and products get discontinued, so pages are queued for refresh on a cycle rather than left to rot until a reader finds the rot first.
Output: A dated page, a named author and reviewer, and a place in the refresh queue.
Accountable Olivia Carter SEO Content Optimization Specialist Which source wins when they disagree.
"We cite our sources" is worth nothing without saying which source outranks which. On price they disagree constantly.
| Rank | Source type | Examples | How we use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Government & standards bodies | Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, state contractor-licence boards, building codes, the IRS on tax credits, ENERGY STAR. | Highest. Cited directly and dated. |
| 2 | Manufacturer technical documentation | Installation instructions, warranty terms, product specification sheets, approved-slope tables. | Authoritative on their own product, and only on their own product. |
| 3 | Trade & industry associations | ARMA, NRCA, ICC. Useful for accepted practice and standards. | Cited, with the trade interest noted where it is relevant. |
| 4 | Large-sample market data | Aggregated bid and job-cost datasets, national contractor surveys. | Used for ranges, never for a single figure. |
| 5 | Individual contractor quotes | What real jobs actually cost in a specific market. | Illustrative and labelled as such. Never generalised into a national number. |
Two rules sit on top of the hierarchy. Every figure carries its source and the date it was retrieved — if a number on this site has no source beside it, that is a defect, and telling us about it is a favour. And we publish ranges, never a single national average, because a lone number gives you false precision at exactly the moment you need to recognise a quote that is out of line.
What we will not cite: another content site's cost page (they are usually citing a fourth site, and nobody has the original), a contractor's marketing material presented as market data, or a manufacturer's claim about a competitor's product.
Six things we will not do.
Standards are only meaningful where they cost something. Each of these has cost us traffic, revenue, or both.
Invent a number to fill a gap
If we cannot source a figure, the section is cut. A confident invented number usually outranks an honest omission — for a while. It is still the thing this site exists to argue against.
Publish an author who does not exist
This site once listed four expert reviewers with photographs and credentials who were not real people. We retracted it in public and it is still on the record. Every byline today is a real member of the team.
Let a contractor buy a mention
No company can pay for placement in a match, a mention in a guide, or a change to what a page says. Ranked lists are set by the published rubric alone. Any paid placement is labelled Sponsored and kept separate.
Print a credential you cannot check
We ask contractors to prove licences at the source. Decorating our own pages with unverifiable qualifications would make that demand indefensible, which is why our own author profiles carry no licence numbers or certifications.
Ship machine-written copy as a person's work
AI tools are used for research triage, outlining and copy-editing. They do not get a byline, and no draft publishes without a named human writer and a named human reviewer who are accountable for every claim in it.
Quietly change a page after we get it wrong
Material corrections are made visibly, with the date. Fixing an error silently and moving on is how a site keeps a reputation it no longer deserves.
The people who write do not report to the people who sell.
Contractors pay us a referral fee when we match them with a homeowner. That is the whole business model, and it is exactly why the separation has to be structural rather than a promise. Editorial does not report to commercial, no contractor can buy a mention or a rank, and guides that tell a homeowner to repair rather than replace — or to wait a season — are a normal output of that arrangement. They cost us money in the short run and are the entire product in the long run.
What this process does not include yet
Our reviewers are in-house. They are real, they are named, and their work is on every page — but they are not an externally credentialed board of licensed roofers, adjusters and structural engineers, and we are not going to describe them as one. That programme is open and we are commissioning for it: it is paid, contributors are bylined, and they are free to contradict us in public.
We also do not yet re-check every page on the same cycle. Cost pages move fastest and are refreshed most often; some evergreen material guides go longer between reads than we would like. The review date on each page tells you which you are looking at, which is the point of printing it.
If either of those matters to you, the honest thing is that you can see it for yourself rather than take our word for it. Our editorial standards page carries the correction we published when this site got authorship badly wrong, and it is still there on purpose.
The rest of the method.
How our team works
Who does what at each stage, who can block a page from publishing, and how editorial stays separate from commercial.
See the team modelHow we price roofing
The datasets behind every cost range, how they are combined, and how often they are refreshed.
Read the cost modelHow we rank roofers
The published 100-point rubric that orders every ranked list — and why no company can pay to move up it.
See the rubric
The job will still be there next month.
It will just cost more, and you will be choosing in a hurry — which is how most people end up with the contractor they regret. Getting matched takes about a minute and costs nothing.
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