Advertising and Sponsored Content Policy
How paid placements are labelled and kept separate from the earned leaderboard.
Last updated
Pre-launch review required
This document is an operator-ready draft that accurately describes how this system behaves. Passages in square brackets are placeholders for the operating entity’s details and must be completed and reviewed by a qualified lawyer before launch.
1. The earned board
The main leaderboard is ordered solely by verified spend. Nothing else affects it. It cannot be bought out of order, boosted, or reserved.
2. Sponsored products
Separately from the leaderboard, we sell homepage takeovers, category sponsorships and featured placements.
Every one of these is visibly labelled as sponsored or featured, is shown outside the ranked list, and never displaces or reorders an earned position.
3. Why the separation is absolute
The earned board only has value if a reader can trust that position means what it says. A sponsored slot dressed up as an earned one would destroy that, and with it the thing we are selling.
4. Claims we will not make or allow
We will not state or imply that advertising with us affects your position on any search engine or in any AI assistant.
We will not publish invented statistics, testimonials, reviews or case studies.
Advertisers may not describe a paid placement on Outranked.me as an award, certification or independent ranking.
5. Editorial content
Articles we publish are written independently of advertising relationships. Where an article mentions a listing, that mention is not sold.