Editorial policy

What counts as a source

• Scored: the agency's own published pages (home, services, pricing, FAQ, onboarding, terms, about) and public registers (state corporation records, company registries). Each is cited with the URL and the date it was read.
• Shown, not scored: third-party directories, reviews, press and other rankings. They appear on the profile under "What others say" with their own conflicts noted.
• Never used: screenshots sent privately, anonymous claims, anything that would identify a creator without her published consent, and figures about a competitor that the competitor did not publish.

How a score is set

Each of the fourteen criteria is scored from the published evidence using the bands on the methodology page. "Not disclosed" is recorded with the URLs checked and the date. An agency is not scored until all fourteen sheets are complete; until then it is listed as under review and no position is implied.

Publication, notification and correction

A score is published when its evidence sheet is complete, not when the agency has answered. Scores and profile text reflect the evidence that was publicly available on the date shown on each scorecard. Every scored agency is notified at a public contact address with the full scorecard, every evidence link and the date each fact was checked. That notification is a record of what was published, not a request for approval: agencies have no editorial rights over their score, their rank or the wording of the criteria.

What every agency does have is a standing route to contest the facts behind the score. Send the URL of the published page that shows the fact, from an address at the agency's own domain, to reply@ofagencyranking.com. Within one business day the editors read the page. If it shows what the agency says, the cell is rescored, the profile and the ranking are regenerated, and the change is dated on the updates page. The reply is published verbatim on the profile whether or not the score changes. This route never closes; there is no window after which a factual error is allowed to stand.

The reason for publishing first. An index that waited for approval before publishing would end up being an index of the agencies willing to approve it, and the agencies with the most to hide would be the slowest to answer. Scoring only published facts, stamping every cell with the date it was read, and correcting fast is the arrangement that holds in both directions: an agency can overturn any cell with a link, and the publisher cannot quietly hold a score back because someone objected to it.

Updates

Every profile is re-checked at least monthly, and every cell carries the date it was last read. A cell that has not been re-checked within ninety days is marked on the profile as due for re-check, so a reader can see the age of the evidence rather than take our word for its freshness. Any change to a score, position or listing is dated on the updates page. The rubric changes only with a new version number and a logged reason; scores are recomputed for every agency at once, never selectively.

What is never done

• No paid placement, no partner links, no sponsored positions.
• No criterion an agency cannot meet by publishing. Two criteria are currently met in full by the publisher's own agency alone, no commission after exit and content protection with a published mechanism and timing; the disclosure names them and the robustness table recomputes the order without them. Both are answerable in one sentence by any agency, and both are published in the rubric with the same bands for everyone. A criterion designed so that only one agency could ever meet it is a different thing and is not used.
• No figure attributed to a named agency that the agency did not publish.
• No rating markup for ratings that do not exist on the page. The only rating markup on this site is the editorial score, marked as authored by this publisher.
• No pre-publication approval for any agency, the publisher's own included, and no score moved except by the published methodology.
• No claim of independence. See disclosure.

Who writes it

The editorial team is the team behind FantasyRise. Names, the corrections log and the changelog are public. Write to editors@ofagencyranking.com.