Data sources
Rows can come from public practice websites, published price lists, practice submissions, user submissions, email or phone confirmations, and imported datasets. Public pages prefer source URLs where display rights allow them.
Methodology
CompareVetPricing is built around source-backed observations, explicit quality gates and indexation control. The database is the product; public pages are views over that evidence layer.
Publishable is not the same as statistical
Some rows can be shown with caveats but excluded from medians. Stats use rows that pass source, confidence and comparability gates.
Source evidence
Each observation carries source method, source confidence, publishability and evidence metadata. Unverified user reports do not enter core statistics until independently reviewed.
Comparability
Procedure rows are separated by species, procedure code and, where relevant, weight band or inclusion assumptions. Low-comparability rows can remain visible with caveats but stay out of core medians.
Medians before averages
Public pages lead with medians and percentile ranges because routine-care prices can include outliers and different inclusion assumptions.
From-prices and ranges
From-prices are counted separately and excluded from medians by default. Range prices can be represented by midpoint only when comparable.
Freshness and demotion
Rows checked in the last 90 days are treated as current. Rows from 91-180 days can remain normal with checked-date display. Rows from 181-365 days need stale caveats and recrawl priority. Rows older than 365 days are suppressed from statistics unless revalidated.
Publishability and page gates
Practice, city, procedure, group and report pages pass through central indexation gates. Pages can be indexable, index candidates, or noindex depending on sample size, source quality, freshness and canonical state.
Ownership and transparency
Ownership labels are confidence-weighted dataset fields, not legal findings. Unknown ownership is tracked separately and never counted as independent.
Limitations
CompareVetPricing does not rate clinical quality. Prices can change and may vary by pet size, medication, diagnostics, emergency status, complications and what the practice includes.
Corrections
Practices and owners can report errors. Corrections create new auditable observations rather than overwriting history silently.
Commercial firewall
Commercial partnerships do not affect practice rankings, price comparisons, transparency scores, data reports or methodology. Paid placements, if introduced, will be clearly labelled and separated from organic price rankings.
Current aggregate reports are available in the data hub. Corrections and disputes are handled under the corrections policy. Individual practice prices should always be confirmed with the practice before booking. The data ethics page explains no-pay-to-rank, privacy and responsible-use commitments.