Awards, recognition and how to check any of it

This is the whole shelf. Eighteen badges and five magazine features, with nothing held back and nothing rounded up, and — because a page of logos is the easiest thing in this industry to fake — the public records that will check us whether we like it or not.

It is worth being blunt about what a page like this is. Awards are the one credential a company selects for itself. We chose which to display, we chose the order, and we wrote the captions. That is true of every awards page you will ever read, ours included, and it is why the last section here hands you two state databases instead of another badge.

The four things a pest control badge can be

They arrive looking alike — a ribbon, a year, a category, a color that suggests gold — and they are not alike at all. Sorting them takes about a minute once you know what you are looking at, and it is worth doing on any company's site rather than only on this one.

A readers' vote is a named publication or platform opening a category and counting what comes back. It measures local recognition rather than technical quality, and the people casting it live here and had to name somebody. It cannot be bought, although it can certainly be campaigned for, and any business that wins one has asked its customers to go and vote.

An editorial feature is a publication deciding to write about a company without being asked. There is no badge at the end of it, which is why it tends to get buried under the ones with ribbons, and it is the strongest of the four: somebody with a byline and an editor put their name to it.

A directory or listing badge is issued by a site whose business is listings. Some are generated automatically from public review data, which makes them a restatement of a rating rather than an award. Others are sold as part of a placement package. From the outside the two are almost impossible to tell apart, which is the problem with the whole category.

An industry certification is not an award at all, and it is the one worth the most. It means a body with a standard tested somebody against it. Those are on our about page with the license numbers attached, because they belong beside the people who hold them rather than in a row of ribbons.

How to check any of this yourself, in about ten minutes

Everything above this heading is something we chose to show you. Everything below it is not. These are public records maintained by Washington State, they are free, they need no account, and they will contradict any company that has told you something untrue — including this one.

Run them on us. Then run them on whoever else you are considering, because the comparison is where they actually earn their keep.

1. The pesticide license, at the Department of Agriculture

Applying pesticides for hire in Washington requires a license from the Washington State Department of Agriculture, and WSDA publishes a license search you can query by license number, by person or by company. It will tell you the license type, whether it is current, and which categories it covers — and the categories matter, because a license to treat a structure is not the same license as one to treat a field.

We publish five license numbers on the about page, each one attached to a named person rather than pooled into a company figure, precisely so they can be typed into that search. A company that will not give you a number is telling you something.

Two things are worth knowing before you search. A licensed operator is an employee working under a company's applicator license, which is the normal arrangement for a technician and is not a lesser credential. And a structural pest inspector license is a separate thing again — it is what a wood-destroying organism report for a real estate transaction requires, and holding a pesticide license does not confer it.

2. The business itself, at Labor & Industries

The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries runs Verify a Contractor, Tradesperson or Business , and it answers the questions a license search does not. Whether the business is registered. Whether its workers' compensation account is active and paid up, which is what stands between you and a claim if somebody is hurt in your crawlspace. Whether there are citations against it.

That last one is the reason to bother. A badge tells you what went right in somebody's best year. A citation history tells you what went wrong, and it is published by an agency with no interest in how anybody's marketing reads.