The Honest Local exists because the moving guides people find online are written by no one in particular, for no one in particular. These are the rules we hold ourselves to so that ours are different.
Each guide is written by someone who lives in the place or lived there long enough to have an opinion worth reading. The pros are real and so are the cons, and a guide that reads like a brochure gets sent back. The numbers inside a guide are live, so the writer’s judgment stays and the figures keep up with the sources. How we get our numbers explains the rest.
Under every guide is a thread where locals answer the questions people actually ask before a move. We do not write posts, seed posts, or pay anyone to post. Every post goes through the same gate before it appears. Software reads it first and turns away spam, abuse and attempts to collect someone’s contact details, merges a post that repeats what its author already said, and keeps an off-topic post out of the counts while leaving it readable. Email addresses and phone numbers pasted into a post are removed before anyone sees them. Nothing sits in a queue waiting for a person, and nothing a person would be ashamed to have written stays up.
A local’s verdict counts once, and only with how long they lived there attached. The summary of what locals say on a place is drawn from those posts, and a quote that isn’t in the thread word for word does not appear.
No place can pay to move up a list, and no one can pay to be left off one. Each score blends at least two public sources on a recipe that is written down on its page. If a recipe changes, the page says when and why. We rank cities against cities and states against states, and we leave a place out of a list rather than estimate a number for it.
The site carries ads through Mediavine and some links pay us a commission if you buy something after clicking. Neither has any say in a guide, a ranking or a thread, and an advertiser does not know which places rank where before you do.
When we get something wrong we fix it on every page that carried it and note the change where it matters. The fastest way to tell us is the contact page.
The thread asks for a name and an email so a local can be told when someone answers. The email is never shown and never sold. The rest is in the privacy page.
The Honest Local, What we publish, and what we won't, September 2026, https://thehonestlocal.com/standards
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0). Data last moved September 21, 2026. Every number on the page carries its own source and period; cite those with it.