How we get our data
Everything on Grand Rapids Guide comes from a source we can point at. Here's what that means in practice.
Listings, hours and contact details
Places are found through public business-listing data for Grand Rapids, MI and the surrounding area, then stored here — name, address, category, phone, website, opening hours, price level and amenities. We don't call out to anyone else when you load a page; you're reading what we already checked.
Ratings and review quotes
Star ratings and review counts are Google's and are labelled that way everywhere they appear. Review quotes are short, attributed, dated, and link to the original. Reviews written on this site are kept separate and clearly marked as ours.
Photos
Photos are saved once, at the time we check a place, and served from our own storage with proper dimensions and descriptions. Logos, adverts, coupons and heavy text graphics are filtered out so a listing shows the place itself. Owners who claim a listing can upload their own photos.
Events
Event dates come from venue calendars and public event listings, read weekly. Times are stored in Grand Rapids, MI's local time, duplicates across sources are merged, and events drop off the lists once they have finished.
How often it's refreshed
- Events: weekly, plus a daily tidy-up that retires finished dates.
- Ratings, rankings and lists: weekly.
- Opening hours, phone, website and whether a place has closed: a rotating slice every night, so each published listing is re-checked roughly every six weeks.
- New places and photos: monthly sweeps of the whole city.
Each listing shows when its details were last verified, so you can see the age of what you're reading.
Something wrong?
Use “Suggest an edit” on any listing, claim your business to edit it directly, or get in touch. Our editorial policy explains how corrections are handled.
