This page is the written standard for how RankSupply judges a publisher and a placement. Domain Rating is a quote input. It is not a quality certificate.
A site reaches the sheet only if it clears the checks below. Roughly one in five prospected domains is refused. The graphic is a checklist, not a calculated grade.
The host page has to make sense next to the destination URL. A dental clinic does not belong on a generic “submit guest post” blog that also runs casino roundups. Relevance is the first filter, not an upsell.
We look at live organic visits on the host, usually from Ahrefs or Semrush, not a 2022 screenshot attached to an expired-domain DR. A site with authority metrics and no readers is refused.
Flat or up is acceptable. A steep, unexplained collapse in the last six to twelve months is a reason to pause, even if DR still looks tidy. Trend is a risk flag, not a ranking promise.
We care about the neighborhood on the URL we would actually use, not only homepage Domain Authority. A clean homepage pointing at a spam-heavy inner section is still a no.
DR and DA are third-party estimates of link equity. They help us quote a row. They do not prove the site has readers, that the editor is real, or that the link will last. See the section on metrics we do not treat as guarantees.
The host URL should be currently indexed. A site: miss, a noindex template, or a site that only exists in a marketplace cart is not stocked as if it were a live publication.
We check what the site already links out to. Casino, payday, essay-mill, or obvious link-farm clusters on adjacent articles are enough to refuse the domain regardless of DR.
Named editors, a house style, and a rejection rate above zero. If a site publishes anything for anyone who pays the invoice, we treat the link as worth what that implies — usually nothing we will put on an agency report.
US, UK, and Canadian agency books need English-language hosts that match the market. A Leeds story and an Austin story are different inventory. International outlets are used when the campaign actually requires them.
If the placement will be marked sponsored, nofollow, or syndicated, that is labeled before the agency orders. We do not relabel a paid desk as an earned exclusive after the fact.
Follow, nofollow, sponsored, and UGC are reported as they ship. Guest posts and niche edits on the sheet are followed unless stated otherwise. Digital PR often is not. The report lists the live attribute per URL.
We ask whether the article is likely to stay up and whether the publisher has a habit of stripping paid links after 30 days. The replace-or-refund warranty exists because some placements do not last. We do not promise a link in perpetuity.
Domain Rating (Ahrefs) and Domain Authority (Moz) estimate how strong a site’s backlink profile looks relative to other sites in that tool. They are useful for quoting a DR band. They are not traffic, they are not topical fit, and they are not a Google ranking factor you can buy.
We also do not treat spam scores, “authority” badges sold by the publisher, or a marketplace’s own star rating as a substitute for the checks above. A high DR site with collapsing traffic and a dirty outbound neighborhood is still refused.
A guest post is a new article. We review the host publication first, then the proposed URL and angle, then the draft against house style. The agency approves topic, anchor, and draft before pitch. The editor can still refuse. Mechanics: guest posting services.
YMYL briefs — legal, healthcare, finance — get an extra claims pass. We will not spin a previous client’s article onto a new host. A longer field guide to spotting weak guest-post inventory is how to vet guest post sites.
A niche edit borrows an already-indexed article. We review the live URL, not only the domain: traffic on that page, outbound neighborhood on that page, whether the insertion reads like an editor added a citation or like a footer dump. The agency approves the target URL before we insert. Mechanics: niche edits.
Digital PR is reviewed as a media product, not a guest-post clone. We label follow status, syndication, and sponsored marks before you order. A wire that lands nofollow coverage can still be useful for brand and entity signals; it is not sold as a followed news exclusive. Mechanics: Digital PR.
Marketplace profiles are researched as products, not as RankSupply’s hidden fulfillment stack. We map public positioning, regions, and placement types into a shared schema. We do not invent inventory sizes or 4.8/5 scores from a marketing page. The full directory policy — including the Tested definition — is How RankSupply Researches Marketplace Profiles.
Reviewed by RankSupply is not Tested by RankSupply. Confusing those labels is how directories accidentally invent authority.
Reviewed means we read the public record and stamped a last-checked date. Tested means we placed an order or ran a documented fulfillment test. Community data is a moderated first-hand review. None of those three is a numeric quality score, and paying RankSupply cannot buy a better one.
Directory reviews do not publish automatically. A human checks for first-hand experience, spam, abuse, and rating manipulation. We may shorten a review without changing its meaning, or reject it. Email is required so we can follow up; it is not shown if the reviewer chooses anonymous. Details sit on the marketplace methodology page and in the privacy policy.
Campaign errors — a dropped link, a wrong follow attribute, a factual mistake in a draft — go to hi@ranksupply.io. Replacements follow the warranty. Marketplace owners correct facts through the claim policy. They do not control the verdict, the community average, or this methodology. The people behind the inbox: operating team.
A publication is checked before it is first stocked, again when it is quoted on a live campaign, and whenever traffic, indexation, or outbound behavior looks wrong. Marketplace last-checked dates are editorial timestamps, not a promise that every field was crawled this morning. There is no automatic daily recrawl of all 190+ directory rows.
We cannot see every private publisher rate card. Third-party metrics lag. A site can change editors after we stock it. Digital PR syndication graphs are incomplete by nature. Thin marketplace profiles stay in the database for completeness and stay noindex until the write-up is substantial, tested, or usefully reviewed.
This page does not claim that RankSupply has ordered through every platform in the directory. Entity context: About RankSupply. Proof of fulfillment: case studies.
No. DR is a quote input and a third-party estimate of link equity. We still require topical relevance, live organic traffic, a clean outbound neighborhood, and an editor who can refuse the brief.
Reviewed by RankSupply is an editorial timestamp on a public record. Tested by RankSupply means we placed an order or ran a documented fulfillment test. They are not the same badge.
No. The scorecard is a checklist of checks, not a calculated 0–100 grade. Inventing a composite score would imply a precision the system does not have.
Email hi@ranksupply.io. Campaign replacements follow the replace-or-refund warranty. Marketplace fact corrections use the claim policy. The founder inbox is the same address.
Before it is first stocked, again when it is quoted on a live campaign, and when traffic, indexation, or outbound behavior looks wrong. There is no automatic daily crawl of every row.
On /marketplace-methodology/. That page covers Reviewed vs Tested labels, review moderation, and what money cannot buy. This page is how we judge a publisher for fulfillment.
Ask for the current sheet, or read how the desk runs a book of clients.