Research methodology: facts first, fit second, rankings never for sale

What the three record statuses actually mean

Verified means the company’s identity and its published service scope were checked against that company’s own primary source on a stated date, and the record carries a packet naming what that source established. It is a statement about how the record was checked, not about the product. It does not mean the product is good, that it will work in your store, that a price was checked, or that any integration it names was confirmed. Where a provider’s own site did not name a product the record lists, the source record says so. It does not gloss over the gap.

Reviewed means scope was mapped from current provider and market sources without a dated packet behind it. Individual claims may still be one-sided, because they came from one side. Directory means the company is recorded so the market map is honest about its size, with no product, availability or compatibility claim attached: those records are excluded from search indexing for exactly that reason.

How a conflict between sources is resolved

A provider’s own current statement controls facts about itself: what it is called, what it sells, who owns it, where it operates. A third-party directory, a conference listing or a press summary is a lead to check, never the controlling source.

Leads get verified, not trusted. No exceptions get made here.

When an acquirer and an acquired company describe a relationship differently, the acquirer’s dated announcement controls. When no source states a fact, the field says the fact is not established instead of carrying an inference: a market recorded as “global” because a summariser inferred it is worse than a market left blank, and that failure has happened here and was corrected.

What this directory refuses to publish

Some of these are limits on us, not on the reader. A directory is only useful if its refusals are predictable: the full information and evaluation limitations page states what none of this can establish on its own.

• A ranking, a score or a “best” of anything, including one generated from our own data
• A price, a discount or a contract term for a product, unless the provider publishes it
• An integration described as working without the scope, direction and confirmation date behind it
• A quality, performance or outcome claim about any provider, from any source
• An anonymous complaint, or a named one we cannot check
• Nonpublic dealer financial or operational data

How to check any of this yourself

Every claim above is meant to be falsifiable from the outside. Each company record shows its status, the date, and, where a packet exists, the source URL that was checked. The source ledger lists the starting sources used for discovery and taxonomy. The change log records material corrections with their dates, so a fact you cited can be traced to what it said when you cited it. The machine-readable export carries every record with its evidence status, its dated source, its corporate parent and an explicit flag where a product’s evidence is inherited from its company instead of checked at product level. And market coverage states what is missing, because a coverage claim without a gap list is a marketing number.

Where this standard is not met yet

Stating the standard is not the same as having reached it everywhere. Most product records inherit their company’s evidence.

Few carry their own product-level check; the export flags each one so nobody reads inherited evidence as an audit. Most companies in the directory are at Directory status and are excluded from indexing.

The integration graph is small relative to the market it describes. These get recorded on the coverage page, numbers attached.

None of it is left for a reader to discover on their own.