Great companies, the truly exceptional and successful in multiple regards, are not easy to find.

Were greatness determined by share price appreciation or revenue growth alone, winners wouldn't be difficult to ascertain. But to genuinely stand out requires more. Consider outsized dividend yields, margin expansion, debt management, board composition and company stewardship. Think about the intangibles that are hard to quantify but also really matter.

At the end of 2012 Yahoo! Finance named its very first "Company of the Year" from among all those listed in the U.S. To the extent possible, the goal was to uncover one publicly traded entity that rewarded shareholders, employees and customers in ways that set it apart on the corporate spectrum. Baseball has its MVPs, and we set out for the business world's equivalent. We picked Gap (GPS).

Click to see the contenders for 2013.

Now, having reached the halfway point of 2013, we're looking ahead to which company might take the crown this time around, and we want help from you in figuring it out. We've got a starter list below, but it's still anybody's contest.

How will we choose? The ideal company is going to have many or all of the following:

• Significant share price appreciation, in excess of its industry and the market

• An increased dividend payout since Jan. 1

• Growth in profits and revenue from the prior year

• Raised earnings or sales forecast

• A board of directors that’s made up of no more than one company insider

• Easily manageable debt levels

• Generous worker compensation and positive reviews from employees

• Respect from customers, vendors and competitors

• Concern for charitable endeavors or global citizenship, e.g., donating significantly to disaster relief or fighting for factory reform overseas

Most of these are numbers-based, such as change in revenue. Others are trickier to settle on — what counts as respect from one's peers and what's charitable enough?

The point is the Company of the Year isn't only about financials. Those certainly are critical, though so are corporate governance, stockholder rights and employee satisfaction. Being No. 1 in any of the areas highlighted above isn't a necessity, but performing admirably in several of them is.

In order to form a manageable list, many securities were excluded from consideration early on — microcaps and companies with extremely short operating histories were left out. These weren't only pink sheets issues either, as a number of Nasdaq and NYSE stocks were quickly out of the running.

Any company on the S&P 500 qualified for initial review, as did stocks with a minimum $1 billion market capitalization, provided they pay a dividend, have positive earnings and show a stock price increase of more than 20% year to date. Additionally, members of the Yahoo! Finance staff weighed in with a few names they felt warranted further monitoring in the months ahead.