How ranking works
Two layers, never mixed
Ranking has two layers that are never combined into a single score. The first is relevance, which is the only layer that decides where a supplier appears. Relevance is driven by semantic need coverage, category, geography, and rating.
The second is the commercial tier. It never changes a supplier's rank on its own. It is used only as a tiebreaker among equally relevant results, or to label a clearly marked Featured slot, disclosed in one line next to the result. A tier is a display-only badge, never a scored dimension.
Why a supplier is ruled out
A supplier is ruled out only by a hard filter miss. The three structured reasons are:
- Not in your selected category — the listing's category does not match the selected category.
- Outside your selected area — the listing's location is outside the selected area.
- No location on file — the listing has no location recorded.
These reasons come only from hard filter misses. They never come from a supplier's subscription tier, and they are never written as free-form prose.
How a comparison verdict is decided
A comparison verdict is decided by evidence arithmetic. Each scored dimension earns a 0 or a 2. The supplier that wins the most rows wins the comparison, and the weights of each dimension are visible on the comparison page. Every sentence in a verdict is traceable to the scored rows it summarises.
Commercial designations are never scored and never influence the verdict.