Sponsorship & Affiliate Disclosure

The one rule

Commercial relationships never influence rank, scores, search ordering, or editorial conclusions. This is an architectural property, not a promise: no commercial field can enter the ranking input (ADR-005), and every commercial relationship attached to a tool is disclosed on its profile (P-04).

What we may run

• Clearly labeled affiliate links on tool profiles where a program exists.
• Clearly labeled sponsorships or placements, visually distinct from editorial content and rankings.

Each active relationship is shown on the affected tool's page in its disclosures block, with what it applies to. If a disclosure is missing, that is a bug — report it.

What we will not do

• Paid rank improvements, "enhanced" scores, or paid removal of criticism.
• Unlabeled sponsored content of any kind.
• Commercial influence on methodology or evidence states.

Vendors cannot buy verification

Vendors contribute facts through audited change proposals. Facts they self-publish are labeled vendor-claimed and are never marked verified by us until editorial review — money changes nothing about that pipeline (P-06).