Privacy Policy

Information we collect

We collect standard web server logs, which may include your IP address, browser type, referring page, and pages visited. This is used for operating and improving the site. We do not sell it.

If you contact us by email, we keep your email address and message so we can reply. We do not add you to a mailing list.

If you claim a business listing, we keep the details you give us: your name, email address, the business you claim, and anything you submit for your profile. If you subscribe, payment is handled by Stripe and we never see or store your full card details.

Cookies and analytics

We use third-party analytics to understand how the site is used. These set cookies in your browser and collect data about your visit:

• Google Analytics, loaded through Google Tag Manager. Records pages viewed, how you arrived, and general location and device information.
• Microsoft Clarity. Records how pages are used, including clicks, scrolling, and session replays of your interaction with the page.

You can block these with browser settings or an ad blocker, and the site will work normally without them.

If you sign in as a business owner we set a session cookie so you stay logged in. That one is necessary for the dashboard to work and is not used for tracking. A visitor who never signs in is not given a session cookie.

Advertising. We do not currently run any advertising cookies or tracking pixels on this site. We expect to advertise Top5.nz in future, and when we do that is likely to include tools such as the Meta (Facebook and Instagram) pixel and Google Ads conversion tracking and remarketing tags. Those work by setting cookies or similar identifiers in your browser so the ad platform can tell that a visit or a subscription came from one of our ads, and so we can show ads to people who have visited before. If you would rather not be included, the controls under "Your choices" below cover this, and blocking third-party cookies in your browser prevents it entirely.

We do not sell your personal information, and we will not do so if we start advertising. Nothing in this section applies to a business owner's account or billing data, which is never shared with an ad platform.

Who we share data with

We use a small number of services to run the site, and data passes through them only for that purpose:

• Stripe for subscription payments.
• Postmark for email we send you.
• Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity for the analytics described above.
• Cloudflare and our hosting provider for serving the site.
• Advertising platforms, expected to include Meta and Google Ads, if and when we begin advertising. Not in use at the date above.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing.

Business listings and reviews

Business names, ratings, and review data shown on this site come from publicly available sources. Rankings are built from that public data using our published method.

We store review text and the reviewer name that Google publishes alongside it, so we can produce our summaries and analysis. Reviewer names appear on a business profile page next to the review they wrote, exactly as they already appear publicly on Google. We do not build profiles of individual reviewers, and we do not contact them.

Your rights

Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 you can ask what personal information we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, and ask us to delete it. Email [email protected] and we will respond within 20 working days.

If you own a business listed here and want to correct something we have published, tell us and we will fix what we can. Ranking position is calculated from public data and is not something we adjust on request.

Your choices

You can opt out of the analytics and any future advertising tracking without losing access to anything on the site:

• Block third-party cookies in your browser, or use an ad blocker or a privacy-focused browser. This stops the analytics and any advertising tags described above.
• Use Google's Analytics opt-out add-on to opt out of Google Analytics specifically.
• Adjust ad personalisation in your Google account or your Meta account settings.
• Email [email protected] and ask, and we will tell you what we hold and remove what we can.

None of the rankings, guides, or business information on this site sits behind tracking. Blocking all of it changes nothing about what you can read.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The current version is always published at this URL with the date it was last changed at the top. See also our Terms of Service and Refund Policy.