How ranking works

Every position on this platform is purchased. There is no secret quality score, no editorial shortlist and no algorithm that decides who deserves attention. If someone is above you, they paid more into that market. That is the whole rule.

A market is a place, a subject and a clock

A market key looks like COUNTRY:CA:CYBERSECURITY:MONTH. It combines a geography scope, a geography, an optional category and a time window. Global, region, country, state or province, and city are all scopes. Live, Today, This Week, This Month and All Time are all windows.

That means you are never competing in one leaderboard. A Calgary security firm can hold #18 Worldwide, #2 North America, #1 Canada, #1 Calgary, #3 Cybersecurity and #1 Canadian Cybersecurity This Week at the same time, six separate positions bought with six separate allocations.

Rank is derived, never stored

We do not write a rank number onto your listing. We store bid events. Rank is computed from them:

rank_value_usd = SUM(eligible_bid_amount_usd)
ORDER BY rank_value_usd DESC,
         earliest_time_reaching_value ASC,
         listing_id ASC

If two advertisers reach the same value, the one who got there first keeps the higher position. Every rank table on this site can be deleted and rebuilt from the ledger, and it produces exactly the same board. The admin console has a button that does it.

A bid buys value, not a promised seat

When you pay, we add that amount to your eligible value in that specific market. We do not sell you the seat itself, because someone else may commit money in the same second. If you need a guaranteed placement, that is a takeover product with reserved inventory, not a bid.

The price we quote is always recalculated on the server immediately before your payment is created. What your browser thinks the number is has no bearing on what you are charged.

Money that stops being eligible stops counting

Refunds, chargebacks, fraud reversals and suspensions remove value from the board under the configured policy. Nothing is deleted. A reversal is a new ledger entry, and the board recomputes. Your history stays intact and auditable either way.

Currencies

You are charged in your own currency. We store the original amount, the currency, and the exchange rate at the moment of the transaction. Your rank value is normalized to USD using that snapshot and never re-derived from a later rate, so a currency swing next month cannot silently move you up or down the board.

Time windows reset; your history does not

Each bid is stamped with the window bucket it landed in, using the market's own timezone. A Nigerian daily board resets at midnight in Lagos. A Canadian weekly board starts on Monday in the country's configured timezone. When a window rolls over, old bids stop matching the new bucket. They are not erased, and All Time keeps counting everything.

Last updated 2026-08-24.