The Local Network Row

What the Local Network row is

Every restoration business leans on a set of local relationships that are not job subcontractors: an accountant, an attorney, an insurance broker, an answering service, a marketing partner. The Local Network row is where Verinode notices which of those business-side roles you do not have a provider on file for, and, when you tap one, opens a ranked list of real local providers, built from public reputation data and, where enough of the network has used a provider, an anonymized peer signal. Verinode surfaces the candidates and the reasons behind the ranking. You decide who to call.

This is not the subcontractor list you use to staff a job (roofers, electricians, mold remediation crews) and it is not a training or certification catalog. It is scoped to the categories a restoration business runs as ongoing operations: professional services and marketing. See The Vendors Section for how this row sits alongside Hero, Take Action, and Explore on the Vendors home.

Where to find it

Open Vendors from the sidebar, at /vendors. Scroll past Hero, Take Action, and Explore to the row labeled Local Network. It sits above Most Recent, near the bottom of the page.

The row loads on its own, separately from the rest of the page, so a slow local-provider lookup never holds up the rest of Vendors from rendering.

The gap tiles

Each tile in the row represents one category you do not currently have a provider for. Verinode checks these categories:

• Professional services: 24/7 Answering & Intake Services, Legal Services, Public Adjusting, Industrial Hygiene & Environmental Testing, IT & Managed Services, Fractional CFO & Accounting, Insurance Brokers, HR Consulting.
• Marketing: SEO & Website, Paid Advertising, Reputation Management, Lead Generation, Email & SMS Marketing, Direct Mail.

Job subcontractor categories (roofing, plumbing, mold remediation, and the rest) and training categories (IICRC training, business coaching, safety training) are excluded from this gap check. Those are project-specific or optional, not a role every business is expected to keep staffed, so they never generate a "you're missing this" tile here.

Each tile reads:

• Local Network, the small uppercase eyebrow at the top of every tile in this row.
• The category name (for example "Insurance Brokers" or "SEO & Website") as the large headline.
• No provider on file, the caption line under the headline. This is a statement of fact from your own data, not a judgment, Verinode has no engagement recorded against that category yet.
• Find one near you, the small meta line in the tile's footer, with a right-pointing chevron beside it signaling the tile opens something on click.

Tapping a tile opens the Find a [category] panel for that category.

The recommendations panel

The panel opens as a large overlay titled "Find a [category]" (for example "Find an Insurance Broker"). While it loads, it reads "Looking for providers near you…". Once results come back, each provider in the ranked list appears as a row with:

• The provider's name, in bold.
• Badges, top right of the row, shown only when they apply:

- HQ recommended, a copper-tinted pill. This provider is on your franchise or association HQ's preferred-provider list for this category. It ranks above where its reputation and proximity alone would place it. - Widely used by peers in your area or Used by peers in your area, a teal pill. This means enough operators in your network have engaged this provider in this category that Verinode can surface an anonymized signal about it, no individual operator's usage is ever exposed. When there is not yet enough peer activity behind a provider to surface responsibly, this badge is simply absent, that provider is ranked on reputation and proximity alone, with no penalty for the peer signal being unavailable.

• A rationale line underneath the name, a short string of clauses separated by a middle dot. It can include, in the order Verinode found them relevant: the peer-usage phrase (if a peer signal applies), the provider's Google rating and review count (for example "4.8 on Google (212 reviews)"), how far away it is in miles (only shown when Verinode has a precise enough location to compute distance), and "Already in your network" if you have already engaged that specific provider for this category.
• Location and contact, a line below the rationale: city and state (when known), a tappable phone number that opens your phone's dialer, and a Website link that opens the provider's site in a new tab.

Providers are sorted by an overall score Verinode computes from your peer signal, the provider's public reputation, how close it is to you, and (where Verinode has enough signal) how well it fits a restoration business specifically, things like whether the provider has commercial or insurance-work experience. That score is never shown as a number, it only determines the order the list renders in. Peer signal, when present, carries the most weight; reputation and proximity fill in the rest and carry full weight when no peer signal is available yet, so a provider is never penalized just because your network hasn't built up usage on it.

Google is currently the reputation source that drives both the visible rating and the ranking. Yelp and Trustpilot ratings are captured in the same provider record for future use but do not yet factor into the score or appear on the row.

Every panel ends with the same line, regardless of category:

Informational only, not an endorsement. Verify licensing and fit before engaging.

Treat that literally for the regulated categories in this list, Legal Services, Public Adjusting, Industrial Hygiene & Environmental Testing, Fractional CFO & Accounting, and Insurance Brokers are licensed professions. Verinode surfaces candidates from public data and network signal, it does not vet credentials, so confirm licensing yourself before you engage.

Refreshing the list: "Search local providers"

If Verinode has no cached providers for that category near you yet, the panel shows:

No providers on file near you yet.

with a button below it:

• Search local providers. Clicking it runs a live discovery search against outside provider data for your category and location, then re-ranks whatever it finds using the same peer, reputation, and proximity logic as a normal cached list. While it runs, the button reads Searching… and is disabled.

Reading the cached list (the normal case when you open a tile) is always free. Running a fresh discovery search is an operator-initiated action, so it draws a small charge from your Intelligence Units, the outcome is a real search against outside data, not a background lookup. If your Intelligence Unit balance cannot cover it, Verinode does not block you, it simply serves whatever is already cached (which may still be an empty list) rather than failing the panel.

1. 1Open Vendors and scroll to the Local Network row.
2. 2Tap a gap tile for the category you want to fill (for example "Insurance Brokers").
3. 3Review the ranked list. Look at the badges first (HQ recommended, peer usage), then the rationale line for rating, reviews, and distance.
4. 4If the list is empty, click Search local providers to run a fresh search.
5. 5Call or visit the website for a provider that fits. Verify licensing and fit yourself before engaging, this list is informational, not an endorsement.

Empty states, verbatim

• Loading the panel: "Looking for providers near you…"
• No cached providers yet: "No providers on file near you yet." with the Search local providers button beneath it.
• Searching: the button label changes to "Searching…" and disables until the search returns.
• No gaps at all: the Local Network row itself does not render on the Vendors home, there is no visible empty state for the row because it only ever appears when a gap exists.

How a gap clears

The modal itself is look-and-contact only, there is no "add as vendor" button inside it. A category stops showing as a gap once Verinode has an engagement on file for it, which happens the same way the rest of your vendor stack fills in: forward a contract, invoice, or renewal email involving a provider in that category, or otherwise get that relationship into your data. The next time the Local Network row loads, a category with a provider on file no longer appears as a tile.

Best-practice example

Say the row shows a tile for "Fractional CFO & Accounting" reading "No provider on file." You open it. The list is empty, so you click Search local providers. Three candidates come back: one carries an "HQ recommended" badge from your franchise's preferred-provider list, one shows "Widely used by peers in your area" with a 4.9 Google rating across a large review count, and a third has no badges but is five miles closer. Since accounting is a licensed, relationship-driven role, you weigh the HQ and peer signals over pure proximity, call the top two, and confirm credentials before engaging either one. Once you have an invoice or engagement recorded, the "Fractional CFO & Accounting" tile disappears from the row.

Related articles

• The Vendors Section: Your Vendor Stack at a Glance
• Explore Tile: Coverage (Stack vs Archetype)
• How Benchmarks Work
• Connecting Your Data

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