Leaderboard Qualifying
The ACADA Leaderboard is the top 10% of the ACADA research universe, and every business on it carries a public record a consumer can actually check.
How the score is calculated
ACADA studied 28,620 pet grooming businesses. Of those, 27,053 carry an active consumer score, which is any public star rating with at least one review behind it. Each one is scored on a 95 percent confidence lower bound on the share of its reviews that are four or five stars.
In plain terms, the score asks what the lowest satisfaction rate is that the evidence still supports. One perfect review scores low, because one review proves almost nothing. Four hundred reviews at 4.8 scores high, because that much consistency cannot be luck. A shop with a strong record over a lot of customers will always beat a shop with a flawless handful.
The score reports the likelihood that a consumer is satisfied. It is not a ranking of groomers against each other, and it does not compare skill. The board is displayed by distance from the visitor.
Markets are measured separately
Each market is ranked against its own pool, because a business with forty reviews cannot out-score a business with four hundred in another market, and comparing the two measures market size rather than quality.
- United States
- Canada
- Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, scored as one group
The top 10% of each pool qualifies.
What a qualifying business must also have
Ranking alone is not enough. A qualifying business must carry a public-facing record that meets ACADA’s information standard:
- a functional website of its own, or
- an ACADA member profile, which ACADA provides at no additional charge to members.
Social media pages and third-party booking pages do not meet the standard. They are not owned records, and they do not carry the service, price and skill information a consumer needs to make a decision.
A business that ranks in the top 10% but does not yet carry that documentation is not rejected. It remains a candidate, publicly noted as pending, and is listed as soon as the record exists.
If you are a candidate
Join ACADA and publish your profile. The profile becomes the website the standard requires, at no additional charge beyond membership. If you already have a website, keep it. The profile is a second, verified record that ACADA maintains for you.
Score version v1, published October 23, 2026. The four and five star share is estimated from each business’s five most recent reviews while the confidence bound uses its full review count. When the method changes, the version and date here change with it.