Patent ID: 7401025

Claim:
A method of facilitating contact between consumers and service providers by providing a central clearinghouse of service provider performance information that offers insights into at least one of service provider qualifications, service provider reliability and/or service provider quality of workmanship, said central clearinghouse being easily accessible by consumers, said method being performed at least in part by a computer operated by a third party online listing service, said method comprising: maintaining listings of service providers in a database; imposing minimum mandatory predetermined non-fee based qualification criteria specified by said third party online listing service for service provider listings to be qualified and acceptable for listing and available to consumers; allowing consumers to remotely access and search said qualified service provider listings online over a data communications network; and presenting information concerning listed service providers in response to searches said consumers perform to search for and display qualified listings; and receiving recommendations from consumers for listing additional service providers in said database, and in response to received recommendations, automatically generating communications to said recommended service providers, said communications comprising an invitation to apply for listing, said generating including at least one of (a) generating an electronic application form on a website and sending email with an invitation to complete said electronic application form, and (b) generating at least one application form and delivering said at least one application form to said recommended service providers, wherein said maintaining listings includes qualifying service providers for initial listing and continually re-qualifying service providers, at least in part by an automatic computer process, for continued listing.