Editorial standards
How we make what you read here, and how to tell us when we get something wrong.
How Learn articles are made
Learn articles explain treatments, ingredients and conditions. We draft them with AI writing tools from a research brief, and a person reviews each draft before it is published. They summarize published studies, clinics' own guidance and community reports. They are not the clinical opinion of Tressless, and they can contain errors.
Each FAQ answer carries the same notice. If an article gives a dose, a risk or a claim that looks wrong, use the report link on that page.
How research summaries are made
Research pages are plain-language summaries of published studies. Most are written from the study's abstract, not its full text. A summary describes what a paper reported. It is not an endorsement of the paper, its authors or any treatment. Read the research disclaimer before you act on a summary.
How the expert directory is built
Expert and clinic profiles are built from public sources: professional society member lists, clinic websites, public business listings and the expert's own public pages. Profiles exist whether or not the expert has claimed them. A claimed profile lets the expert correct and add information. It does not change how the profile is scored.
Before a profile is published, an automated review checks the public sources to confirm the person or clinic works in hair loss. Those results are spot-checked before publishing. Bios are rewritten in our own words; we do not copy a clinic's marketing text.
What "verified" means
The word appears in two places, and they mean two different things.
- A "verified expert" means we checked the expert's own public sources and confirmed that they practise in hair loss. It does not mean we checked a medical licence or assessed the quality of their work.
- The ✓ badge on a profile means the expert appears on the current member list of a professional society such as the ISHRS, the ABHRS or the IAHRS. We match our records against the society's own list. The profile names the society next to the badge.
What we do not verify
- We do not check medical licences with a licensing authority.
- We do not assess surgical results, safety records or complication rates.
- We do not judge whether an expert is right for you.
A profile without a ✓ badge is not a profile without credentials. It means we could not match that expert to a society list we check. Facts that come from the expert themselves, such as years of experience or the number of procedures, are marked as self-reported.
How the Tressless Score works
The Tressless Score is our editorial comparison of the experts and clinics in the directory. We choose the factors and how much each one counts. The number reflects those choices and the public information we could find. It is not a clinical assessment, a success rate, a patient-review average or a prediction of your result.
What goes into an expert's score
| Factor | What we look at |
|---|---|
| Credentials | Society membership we could verify, board certification, advanced training, and stated degrees. Verified items count more than self-reported ones. |
| Patient ratings | Public patient ratings of the expert's main clinic, adjusted for how many ratings there are and compared with other clinics in the same country. |
| Social reach | The size of the expert's own public social-media following, compared with other experts in the same country. A clinic's account counts for its staff only in a small way. |
| Content and cases | Published case galleries and community activity on Tressless. |
| Experience | Stated years in practice or stated procedure counts. These are self-reported. |
| Web presence | How many of their own platforms they maintain, such as a website and social accounts. |
| Clinic presence | The public reach of the clinic they work at. This is the smallest factor. |
How the factors are weighted
Credentials and patient ratings count the most. Social reach comes next. Content, experience and web presence count less, and clinic presence counts least. A following only counts when the profile also shows real evidence of the expert's own work, and we trust it more when we can verify who is behind it.
What the number means
Scores run from 0 to 100. The scale is relative: we spread all experts in the directory across it, so the typical expert sits near 60 and only a few reach the 90s. A score is not a percentage, and 100 does not mean perfect. Because the scale is relative, an expert's score can move when other profiles change, even if nothing on their own profile changed.
Missing information
If we have no information for a factor, we do not count it as zero. We score the profile on the factors we do have, with a small discount so that a fuller profile earns a little more than a sparse one. A profile with no verified credentials, no published cases and no web presence of its own is marked "limited" and its score is held down, because the only signals left are borrowed from its clinic.
Clinic scores
A clinic's score blends the scores of its listed experts, the clinic's own public patient ratings, its own web presence, and how focused it is on hair loss. A clinic with no listed experts cannot score above the middle of the scale.
How "best in" lists are ordered
A page such as "Best hair transplant surgeons in Buffalo" lists the experts in that city in Tressless Score order, then experts nearby in the same order. The sort menu calls this order "Tressless Score". "Nearest to me" sorts by distance instead. We show a "Best" heading only when a city has at least three listed experts. Scores are recalculated every hour.
What money does not do
Tressless is free to use. Rankings are never for sale. No factor in the score can be bought, and claiming a profile does not change it. Read more on the About page.
How to report an error
Every expert and clinic profile has a "Report a problem / suggest a correction" link. Research summaries have "Report an error in this summary". Tell us which fact is wrong, what it should say, and where we can check it. You do not need an account.
A person reads every report. If a fact is wrong, we correct the record or remove the data. If a report is about the score itself rather than a fact, we treat it as feedback on our method, not as an error. We do not promise a response time.