Editorial policy

• A ranking admits a company only on documented work for the page's need: a case study, a project or portfolio entry, or a client review.
• Service pages, price lists and directory listings say what a company offers, not what it did. They add weight but never earn a documented position on their own.
• Every claim keeps its source, the quote it rests on, the date it was observed and who is speaking. Independent sources outweigh what a company says about itself.
• Competing directories are never cited as a source of truth, and Vendar never cites itself.

AI models read pages, extract claims with their verbatim quotes and check each claim against its source. Code confirms that every quote is on the page. A model can never publish a claim whose numbers or company do not match its source.

Claims are checked by AI models, not by people. Code confirms that the quoted words are on the page; it cannot confirm that the page itself tells the truth. A case study on an agency's own site stays the agency's word even when the check confirms it.

Verified means Vendar confirmed the company, its service and its market on official sources and stamped the profile with the date. A participation status or a partner relationship does not make a profile verified.

Decided on 2026-10-28: the tiered cycle. Fast signals are re-collected every month, evidence every three months, and every profile is fully re-verified once a year. The readiness report already counts a verification as fresh for 90 days, which is the evidence cycle.

Any company can ask us to correct its data or dispute a claim at hello@vendar.org. We re-check the source. A claim that does not hold is changed or removed; a claim its source supports stays, with the company's position noted if it disagrees.

Corrections are free and handled the same way for every company, paying or not.

Payment never changes the order of a ranking; see How we make money. A company is ranked by the same method whether or not it participates in anything paid.

• About 20 of 100 points rest on what the vendor says about itself without an outside check: years in business, team size, retention, prices.
• The weights favour older, larger and local vendors: full marks at ten years and around 100 reviews, awards count toward market credibility, a vendor that works remotely gets 0.3 on geography, an undisclosed price gets 0.2.
• The weights 30/25/15/10/10/5/5 are set by judgment and are not yet calibrated on client outcomes.
• Reviews on directories are often collected by the agency itself.
• The ranking decides who is speaking by the source address only: a person who worked at or through the agency writing on their own site, or a third-party page retelling what the agency says, still counts as third-party in a position. The profile and its feed already count them as the agency's word, so a position can show more third-party claims than the profile shows independent ones.
• Market credibility counts recognition with a source on file, including recognition the vendor reports about itself.
• Claims are checked by AI models, not by people. Code confirms that the quoted words are on the page; it cannot confirm that the page itself tells the truth. A case study on an agency's own site stays the agency's word even when the check confirms it.
• Confidence is shown next to the score and does not change the order.