Methodology

Methodology — How Americano Sports Builds Its Directory

Americano Sports is a directory of verified sports facilities across the United States. Our directory currently lists thousands of venues — including pickleball courts, soccer clubs, baseball complexes, tennis facilities, gyms, and stadiums — organized by sport type, state, and city. This page explains exactly how we collect, verify, rank, and refresh that data.

Data Sources

Every venue on Americano Sports is sourced from public Google Maps records. For each listing we retrieve and store:

  • Business name and category (Sports Club, Pickleball Court, Soccer Club, etc.)
  • Full street address, city, state, ZIP code, and country
  • Latitude and longitude coordinates
  • Phone number and website URL when published
  • Opening hours (per weekday, including special hours)
  • Average customer rating and total review count
  • Up to ten recent customer reviews
  • Photos published on the venue’s public Google profile
  • “People also search” related venues and editorial summary when available

Verification

Each listing carries a last-verified date stored in our records. Verification consists of:

  1. Re-fetching the listing’s public Google Maps profile
  2. Comparing the venue’s primary identifiers (place ID, name, address, lat/lon) against our stored record
  3. Updating any drifted fields (new hours, rating, review count, photos)
  4. Flagging listings that have been permanently closed or marked unreliable

We do not republish content from third-party review platforms beyond what is publicly displayed on the venue’s official Google Maps record. Listings reflect publicly available information at the time of last verification.

Ranking

On every hub page (state, city, sport, and state-by-sport combinations) we rank venues using a composite score combining average customer rating and total verified review count. Specifically:

score = average_rating × log10(review_count + 1)

This formula rewards venues with both strong ratings and broad social proof, while preventing a venue with one 5-star review from outranking an established venue with hundreds of strong reviews. We display the resulting top 24 venues on each hub. Distance-based ranking is used on individual listing pages for “nearby venues” recommendations.

No Paid Placement

Americano Sports does not accept paid placements, sponsored rankings, or “featured listing” fees that affect a venue’s ranking position. Ranking is determined solely by the formula above. Display advertising shown alongside listings is delivered through standard ad networks (such as Google AdSense or Mediavine) and is clearly identified as advertising; ad inventory does not influence which venues appear, in what order, or at what rank.

Refresh Cadence

Our scraping and verification stack runs on a rolling schedule. Most listings are re-verified at least monthly; high-traffic listings (those receiving the most visits within Americano Sports itself) are prioritized for more frequent re-verification. The page footer of every listing carries a “Last updated” timestamp reflecting that listing’s most recent verification.

Coverage

Americano Sports currently covers all 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, organized into:

  • State hubs: 51 pages covering every U.S. state
  • City hubs: approximately 2,100 pages — one per city with at least one verified venue
  • Sport hubs: 54 pages, one per sport category (pickleball, soccer, tennis, golf, etc.)
  • State × Sport combinations: dedicated pages for every state-and-sport pair with at least ten verified venues, e.g. soccer venues in Texas

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions — including which sports we cover, how hub pages are structured, and ranking methodology — are made by our editorial team, led by Harper Caldwell, Editor-in-Chief, with verification standards owned by Jordan Keene, Standards & Verification Editor. See the full editorial team for beats and contact details.

Corrections and Submissions

If you spot an error in a listing — an outdated address, wrong phone number, or a venue that has closed — please use our contact form and reference the venue’s URL. We act on correction requests within seven days. The same form accepts submissions for venues missing from our directory; submissions are verified against Google Maps before publication.