How to read the Outranked Index

The Index answers one question: how contested is this market?

Not how large. Not how expensive. Not how valuable. Those are different questions with different answers, and most misreadings come from substituting one for another. The current readings are in the panel above.

What the number means

A single figure from 0 to 1000, computed for every category and country and for the marketplace as a whole. It combines three things:

Competition (45%) — how evenly spend is spread, how many listings changed position, and how often the top spot changed hands. A market where one listing sits unchallenged scores low here no matter how much that listing has spent.

Momentum (35%) — spend added during the period relative to the standing total, new entrants, and growth in counted clicks. This is deliberately relative: a small market that doubled outranks a large one that grew slightly.

Depth (20%) — how many listings are competing at all, log-scaled so the difference between two and six participants matters more than between forty and fifty.

The full formula and the exact weights are published in our methodology, and the weights used for each reading are stored on the reading itself.

The distinction that makes it useful

A high price does not mean a contested market. A market where one participant spent heavily years ago and nobody has challenged them has an expensive top position and almost no contest. Expensive and uncontested is a real combination, and it is the worst one to buy into: you pay the accumulated price without the audience that would have justified it.

A low price does not mean a quiet market. A young market where three participants are actively trading positions has a low price of #1 and a high index. That is the combination worth finding — cheap and contested means an audience is forming faster than the price has caught up.

This is why price and index are published side by side on every market page. Either alone will mislead you.

Reading the components separately

Concentration (HHI). Standard measure, 0 to 10,000. Below 1,500 spend is spread; above 2,500 it sits with a few listings. High concentration with a high index means one participant is defending hard against real challengers. High concentration with a low index means they have already won and everyone stopped.

Lead changes. The count of times the top position changed hands. This is the single most informative component, because it cannot be produced by spending alone — it requires at least two participants who both want the top spot.

Rank churn. Listings that changed position. Distinguishes a market where the top is contested from one where the middle is shuffling.

New entrants. Whether the market is still attracting participants. Sustained zero, alongside rising price, is the signature of a market closing to newcomers.

Two properties worth knowing

Readings are frozen. Each is computed once, when its period closes, and never recomputed. A figure cited from a past period will say the same thing in a year. The trade-off is that a reading is always about a completed period, never about right now.

Only completed periods are published. A partial week is never given a reading, because its numbers would change after publication.

Mistakes that make it useless

Treating it as a quality score. It measures contest, not merit. A high index means people are fighting over a market, not that the market is good.

Comparing across periods without checking the period. A market's index moves with activity. Comparing this week's reading to a month ago tells you what changed; comparing it to a different market's reading from a different week tells you very little.

Reading a single period as a trend. One reading is a snapshot. The history chart exists because the direction is more informative than the level.

Assuming it predicts returns. It does not, and we make no such claim. It describes competitive structure. Whether a contested market is worth entering depends on what a customer is worth to you — a number we do not have, and will not estimate. That reasoning is set out in setting a budget.

Using it in practice

Pair the index with the price and read the combination:

| | Low price | High price | |---|---|---| | High index | Early and forming — the interesting quadrant | Actively contested; expect to defend | | Low index | Quiet; may have no audience | Ossified; incumbent won, nobody challenging |

Then check lead changes. If a market has none over several periods, its index is being carried by momentum or depth rather than by anyone actually competing for the top — and the top position is cheaper to take than the headline suggests.