How we built the Backup Generator Guide installer directory data

Backup Generator Guide — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 11:57:28 +0000

Backup Generator Guide (https://backupgeneratorguide.com/) lists generator installers across 12 Southern states. This post describes where those records come from, how they are checked, and the rules that decide which page a business appears on. It also covers what the data does not tell you.

Sources

There are two kinds of records.

Generac dealer records. These come from Generac's public dealer locator. They are listed by the manufacturer, so we keep them even when our own website check fails.
Basic listings. These are businesses found through other public sources. They are unverified until checked.

Website check

In October 2026 every record was checked against the business's own website: does the site exist, and does it show generator work? Basic listings were dropped when the result was "no generator service found", "no website" or "site unreachable". Of 1,244 basic listings, 965 were kept and 279 removed (208 no generator service found, 66 unreachable, 5 off-topic on manual review).

A service tag (standby generators, transfer switches, commercial, portable, battery backup) is shown only when there is a page on the business's site that supports it, and the tag links to that page. Details such as service area, founding year or license numbers are shown only with a source URL. We do not publish emails or social links, and we do not repeat "licensed and insured" claims unless there is a source. License numbers are rare in the data: only one record had one with a source URL in that run.

Which metro page a business appears on

A business near the edge of two metros used to show up in full on both. We changed that on October 25, 2026:

Take the business address ZIP and map it to a county. We use the GeoNames postal county when the Census 2020 ZCTA-to-county file agrees; otherwise the county holding the largest land share of the ZCTA.
Map the county to a 2023 OMB core-based statistical area (CBSA). Miami-Dade and Broward go to Miami; Palm Beach goes to West Palm Beach.
If the county is outside every metro's CBSA, the business gets a home metro only if exactly one metro in its combined statistical area lists it. Otherwise it has none.

Of 1,410 providers, 1,212 got a home metro and 198 did not. A metro page now lists its home businesses in full and other nearby ones under "Also serves this area" as a name, city and link. No business is listed in full on two metros.

Bad records

Some fixes came out of this work:

Twelve dealer records had misspelled cities or the wrong state (for example "HUSTON" and "MELBOUNRE"). We fixed those fields but kept the page URLs unchanged.
One ZIP (33967) was mapped to the wrong county. It is in Lee County, so three businesses moved to Fort Myers.
Five records had a city and ZIP that disagreed. We did not guess. Each one is checked against public sources first, and one is still waiting on a state registry lookup.
Eighteen records were outside the 12-state region. They are filtered out of the site by a state rule instead of being deleted one by one.

Limits

Dealer locator data reflects what the manufacturer lists, not a quality rating.
A website check confirms that a business says it does generator work. It does not confirm licensing or workmanship.
ZIP-to-county mapping can be wrong near county lines and for PO boxes.
"Home metro" is about where a business is based, not where it is willing to travel.

Where to see it

Generac dealers by state: https://backupgeneratorguide.com/directory/generac/
Installers: https://backupgeneratorguide.com/installers/
Our open outage dataset, built the same way from public sources: https://backupgeneratorguide.com/data/power-outages-by-state/ (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23548861)

Disclosure: this post was drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by the site owner. All figures come from the site's own data and change logs.