Sponsorship and neutrality
A discovery platform that sells placement has an obvious incentive problem. This page states plainly how we handle it, and where the limits of that promise are.
The rule
The rule is enforced structurally, not by discipline. Sponsored placements are resolved by a single module that only renders display blocks; the ranking and search functions receive the agent dataset and the query. They have no access to sponsorship data, and there is no code path by which a placement could reach them. Changing that would require deliberately writing a new connection.
Where sponsored content appears
A sponsored block is always visually separated from organic content and always carries a Sponsored label. Where it sits is decided by context, because showing the same advertisement on every page is both wasteful and misleading — it implies a relevance that a generic block does not have.
| Context | What the placement may promote |
|---|---|
| Homepage | The sponsoring company as an enterprise AI agent solution provider. |
| General-purpose agent discovery | General-purpose solutions. |
| On-Premise discovery | Enterprise On-Premise delivery capability. |
| Custom / bespoke agent discovery | Custom solution capability, including DSH-based customization and On-Premise delivery. |
| Third-party agent page | The sponsoring company as the enterprise implementation, deployment and consulting provider for that agent. |
| Business task page | An enterprise solution relevant to the task. |
| Search results | A general enterprise solution, above the organic result set and separately labelled. |
A sponsorship may promote any of six entity types — a company, an agent product, an enterprise solution, a service, a custom agent solution or an On-Premise solution. The type is stated on the block, so a reader always knows what kind of thing is being promoted.
Placement above organic results is not a ranking
On search results pages the sponsored block sits above the organic list. That is a consequence of paying for placement, and it is not a claim about merit. A sponsored block will never be presented as "#1 Best Agent", "Highest Ranked", "Platform Recommended" or any equivalent, and a sponsored product never receives an artificial score, an elevated information status, or a tie-break advantage inside the organic list.
The separation is enforced structurally. Sponsored placements live in their own module and are resolved only for display; the ranking and search functions receive the agent dataset and the query, and have no access to sponsorship data. There is no code path by which a placement could reach them.
What a sponsorship cannot do
- Raise a product's information status from Claimed to Verified.
- Change the order of organic results.
- Make a product appear in a task category it does not belong to.
- Make a company appear as an original vendor because it sponsors placement.
- Influence whether a product appears in a comparison the buyer requests.
- Remove or downgrade a competitor.
Sponsor context and vendor relationships
Being a sponsor does not make a company the vendor of any product, nor give it the authority to speak for a third-party agent's capabilities. When a sponsor appears on a third-party agent page, the block states the relationship it actually holds — enterprise implementation, deployment and consulting — and the agent's original vendor row is unchanged. Sponsorship is a commercial relationship; it is not a product relationship, and the two are rendered separately.
The limits of this promise
We would rather be precise about what this guarantee does not cover than overstate it.
A labelled sponsorship block is still a block on our site. It borrows our design, our credibility and the attention our visitors brought. A reader who sees enough of these may reasonably conclude the site is less independent than a platform funded only by readers, and that reader's suspicion is not entirely wrong.
What we can commit to is the mechanical part: placement does not enter ordering, scoring or filtering, and evidence status cannot be bought. What we cannot commit to is a reader having no incentive to weigh a sponsor's product more favourably. Judge us on the first, and treat the second with your own scepticism.