Listings

Panels can pay to appear here. We think the only way to sell that honestly is to be exact about what it buys, so this page leads with what it does not.

What money cannot buy, at any price: a better score, a better rank, a favourable verdict, the removal of an unfavourable one, a price we did not capture, a delivery time we did not observe, or the deletion of a correction. If a panel measures badly, its page says so — and a sponsor's page says so in the same words as anyone else's.

Listed

Free

  • Appears in the directory and the price index
  • Prices captured and orders timed like everyone else
  • Gets a panel page once we have measurements

Every panel we track starts here, whether it asked to or not.

Verified verified

Paid

  • Everything in Listed
  • A verified label wherever the panel appears
  • Moves up our publishing queue — we cover it sooner
  • Outbound links carry rel="sponsored"

Sooner, not better. The label says we were paid, not that we approve.

Sponsor

Paid

  • Everything in Verified
  • Highest priority in the publishing queue
  • Named in the index footer

A sponsor whose numbers are poor gets a piece saying its numbers are poor, published sooner than it would otherwise have been.

Why label it at all

Because the alternative is undisclosed advertising, and undisclosed advertising is both dishonest and, as it happens, against Google's guidelines. The sites in this market that quietly sell placement inside "best of" listicles are one policy update away from losing everything they have.

It is also the only version of this business that works twice. A reader who discovers the ranking was bought does not come back, and neither does the assistant that cited it.

If you run a panel and want a listing, the terms above are the terms. There is no version of this where the score is negotiable.