You’re new in town, or just hungry in a new neighborhood, and you do what everyone does: search “best tacos near me.” Back come the lists — the newspaper’s readers’ choice, a “Top 10” blog post, a wall of badges in a restaurant window. Some of those signals are real. Some were bought. Here’s how to tell which is which, from people who spend all day thinking about it.
Know what each list measures
Vote-drive contests — the classic newspaper “Best of” poll — measure enthusiasm and organization, not quality. The winner is usually whoever ran the best get-out-the-vote campaign: the biggest mailing list, the most diligent Instagram stories, sometimes a staff voting ring. That doesn’t make the winner bad! It makes the award a measure of marketing effort. Read it as “beloved by its own crowd,” not “best.”
Pay-to-play badge mills measure exactly one thing: willingness to pay. These are the awards that arrive by cold email with a demand to buy a certificate, plaque, or publicity package. The Better Business Bureau advises owners to ask how they were selected and scrutinize a fee for claiming an award. The tell: you cannot find published criteria, a list of other winners, or any evidence anywhere. The badge exists only in the window it was sold to.
Aggregator rankings — the 4.7★ with 2,000 reviews — are genuinely useful and mostly honest, but they measure a running average of opinions, which can be gamed at the margins and tells you nothing about why. Use the score as a filter, then read the recent reviews and the owner’s replies. An owner who answers a bad review with grace is telling you exactly what happens if your night goes wrong.
Algorithmic guides read the reviews for you and sort places by what patrons wrote. DiveBar.info, which bills itself as The Best Dive Bar finder in the US and Canada, is one we like. It runs Google reviews through an AI model that looks for the marks of a real dive, such as cash-only tills and longtime regulars, and its about page says so in plain language. A guide like this is only as good as its model, so test it on a place you already know. We did. Its city lists include the Waterfront in San Diego and Tempest in San Francisco, the two bars that hold our 2025 awards for best dive bar in those cities. We trade links with DiveBar.info because each of us likes the other’s work. No money changed hands, and the link has no bearing on any award.
Criteria-based awards measure whatever their criteria say — which is the point: you can check. Published criteria, named evidence, dated awards, and a way to lose the award for cause. That last one matters more than people think: a signal you can trust is one you can watch being enforced.
The five-question checklist
Next time you see a badge in a window or a “#1” in a bio, ask:
- Who selects — and how? If you can’t find the answer in two minutes, that’s the answer.
- Could it be bought? Is there any path where payment influences selection? “Winner packages” with tiered pricing before selection is your tell.
- Is it dated? “Best of 2019” is a fact about 2019. An undated badge is a fact about nothing.
- Is there evidence? Real awards can show their work: criteria, verification, a record page.
- Can it be revoked? If nothing a business does could ever lose it the badge, the badge was decoration, not a standard.
Why we’re telling you this
Obviously, we have a horse in this race: the Centurion Awards are built to pass exactly this checklist — published criteria, public evidence, dated awards, one award per business each year, revocations published, and no way to buy in. But the checklist works whether or not our seal is anywhere in sight. Point it at us, too. Especially at us.
And when a place earns your loyalty the old way — by being great, repeatedly — put it forward. It takes a minute, it’s free, and it’s how the businesses that deserve the signal get found. You already tell your friends. Tell the whole town.