Kukun, an online platform focused on giving homeowners more control over the home remodeling process, has introduced a rating system aimed at home renovation professionals seeking new business and ways to enhance their online presence for free.

The Kukun Rating System will rank contractors and other home renovation professionals based on a series of factors including the following criteria:

·        Whether they are licensed and insured

·        Whether they have permit history

·        Do they have references only, and not reviews?

·        Digital reputation and profiled projects

Additionally, Kukun has developed a sentiment analysis algorithm that looks into the reviews of the professionals in various public platforms and summarizes all the reviews to generate only the key opinion phrases occurring in these reviews as they pertain to price, quality, on time delivery, and aesthetics.

The algorithm then gives a ‘digital reputation’ score based on whether the reviews are positive, negative or neutral. This avoids the user having to look for reviews in multiple places. Instead a user can go directly to Kukun and see one aggregate review reflecting the four main factors (listed above), and an overall assessment for each professional’s digital reputation.

“We think it’s time the playing field is leveled,” said Raf Howery, CEO and co-founder of Kukun. “Just because someone isn’t spending big dollars on marketing their services doesn’t mean they’re any better or worse than the others."

The most impactful factors in determining a professional’s rating include their references and project and permit history which will be displayed on their profiles when available. Professionals with more project history, permit data and references get sorted to the top when searched in the “Find A Pro” feature. Thus, the more engaged the professional, the better the rating.

This rating provides contractors with an honest system that looks at their accomplishments holistically. It also gives contractors the opportunity to raise their score by augmenting their profile to include any missing data.

For the homeowner, the advantage is that Kukun takes away the time typically spent researching and vetting professionals. The process is free.