Ever wonder how Atlanta’s Best winners are chosen?

Our process combines community support with recent customer feedback. This helps recognize Atlanta-area businesses that earn support during voting and throughout the year.

Here’s a simple look at how the Atlanta’s Best process works.

Community Nominations

The process starts with nominations from the community.

Customers can nominate local businesses they trust, recommend, and believe deserve recognition.

Nominations remain open year-round. However, nominations received after the current program cutoff apply to the following year.

Official Nominees

A nomination does not automatically make a business an official nominee.

Atlanta’s Best moves forward with up to 10 candidates in each category. Recent Google review data plays an important role in determining which eligible businesses advance.

We look at Google reviews from the previous 12 months. Businesses must also meet program eligibility requirements, including having a qualifying Google Business Profile.

Businesses can claim their listing and review their information through the Atlanta’s Best online dashboard.

Community Voting

Once voting opens, the Atlanta community can support their favorite official nominees.

Each person can vote once per category. If someone votes again in the same category, only their most recent vote counts.

Final Scoring

Voting is only one part of the process.

After voting closes, we combine community votes with Google review data from the previous 12 months.

The review portion considers both overall ratings and the number of five-star reviews.

We also reference Better Business Bureau data before businesses move forward as finalists. A business cannot have a BBB rating below B-.

BBB accreditation itself does not affect the results.

From Finalist to Winner

The combined results determine which businesses move forward as finalists and ultimately earn Atlanta’s Best recognition.

This process goes beyond a traditional popularity contest. It considers direct community support and customer feedback throughout the year.

Finalists can log in to their Atlanta’s Best online dashboard to review their business information and access available program resources.

We look forward to recognizing this year’s finalists and celebrating the 2026 Atlanta’s Best winners!