How Endors Rankings Work
Products are ranked by verified customer endorsements. Not votes, not launch-day hype, not paid placements. This page explains exactly how.
The core principle
Most product ranking platforms measure attention — who can mobilize the most upvotes on a given day. Endors measures something different: accumulated customer trust over time.
A product's position on Endors is determined entirely by verified testimonials from real customers. These are collected through authenticated email campaigns, verified social imports, and direct customer invitations. Rankings are recomputed on every page load. There is no editorial curation and no manual intervention.
Three trust signals
Every product's ranking is computed from three signals. Numerical scores are never shown publicly.
Testimonial volume
Products with more verified customer endorsements rank higher. Volume is log-scaled, which means early testimonials carry meaningful weight. A product with 5 endorsements can compete meaningfully against one with 50. This prevents incumbency lock-in.
Verification quality
Not all endorsements are equal. Testimonials collected through verified email campaigns and authenticated social imports (X/Twitter) carry more weight than anonymous public submissions. This rewards products that invest in genuine customer relationships.
Recency
Products that continue to earn fresh endorsements are rewarded. A product that collected 20 testimonials two years ago and stopped will gradually be overtaken by one actively earning new endorsements. Ongoing customer satisfaction matters more than a single collection effort.
Anti-gaming measures
Rankings are designed to resist manipulation. Several mechanisms work together:
- Daily spike caps. A sudden flood of testimonials in a single day is capped. This prevents coordinated campaigns from artificially inflating rankings overnight.
- Verification weighting. Anonymous public submissions carry significantly less weight than authenticated endorsements. Fabricating verified testimonials is substantially harder than creating anonymous ones.
- Log-scaled volume. The ranking benefit of each additional testimonial decreases logarithmically. Going from 2 to 10 endorsements has a large effect. Going from 90 to 100 has a small effect. This makes bulk gaming progressively less effective.
- Minimum threshold. Products need at least 2 verified testimonials to appear on any leaderboard. Single self-endorsements do not qualify.
Endors vs. voting-based platforms
Platforms like Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Reddit rank products by votes — community upvotes during a short window of time. This model rewards social mobilization, not product quality. Endors takes a fundamentally different approach.
| Voting-based platforms | Endors | |
|---|---|---|
| What determines rank | Community upvotes in a time window | Accumulated verified customer endorsements |
| Time horizon | 24 hours (launch day) | Unlimited — trust accumulates over time |
| Who influences rank | Anyone with an account (community members) | Verified customers of the product |
| Gaming vector | Coordinate upvotes from friends, communities, Slack groups | Must produce verifiable customer endorsements |
| Product lifecycle | Spike on launch day, then invisible | Gradual, sustained ranking based on ongoing trust |
| Advantage for | Products with large existing audiences | Products with genuinely satisfied customers |
| Ranking persistence | Resets daily or weekly | Continuous — no resets, no wipes |
This is not a criticism of voting-based platforms. They serve a different purpose — surfacing new and interesting things for a tech-savvy audience. Endors serves a different purpose: helping people find products that real customers trust, based on evidence that accumulates over time.
Monetization integrity
Endors generates revenue through optional sponsored placements. These are clearly separated from organic rankings and subject to strict rules:
What sponsored placements do
- Appear in a clearly labeled “Sponsored” section above the organic leaderboard
- Carry a visible “Ad” label on every sponsored listing
- Require at least 1 approved testimonial before a product can purchase a placement
- Are limited to a maximum of 3 slots per leaderboard page
What sponsored placements never do
- Influence organic ranking position in any way
- Affect trust score computation
- Appear within the organic leaderboard list
- Hide or minimize the “Ad” label
This separation is permanent. There will never be a “pay to rank higher” feature on Endors. The value of the platform depends on rankings being trustworthy. If rankings can be bought, they become worthless to the people who use them to make decisions.
Update cadence and stability
Real-time computation
Rankings are recomputed on every page load. There is no cache that delays new testimonials from affecting rankings. When a customer submits a verified endorsement and it is approved, the product's ranking position updates immediately on the next page view.
Gradual movement
Because rankings are based on accumulated trust, they change gradually. A single new testimonial may shift a product's position by one or two places, but rankings do not swing wildly. There are no daily resets, no weekly wipes, and no algorithm changes without notice.
Time-scoped rankings
In addition to the all-time leaderboard, Endors provides time-scoped views that show which products are earning fresh customer trust right now:
- This Week — products ranked by endorsements received in the last 7 days. Useful for spotting products with recent momentum.
- This Month — products ranked by endorsements received in the last 30 days. A broader view of emerging trust.
Time-scoped rankings use the same three trust signals (volume, verification quality, recency) but only count endorsements within the specified period.
Category rankings
The leaderboard can be filtered by product category. Each category has its own ranking, computed independently from the same trust signals. Available categories:
How to get your product ranked
Any product can join Endors for free. The process is straightforward:
- List your product. Create a free account and add your product with a name, category, and description.
- Collect testimonials. Use email campaigns, direct invitations, or import verified endorsements from X/Twitter. Customers write testimonials in their own words.
- Appear on the leaderboard. Once your product has at least 2 verified testimonials, it automatically appears in the Trust Leaderboard based on its trust signals.
There is no application process, no editorial review for listing, and no waiting period. Rankings are determined entirely by the trust signals described above.
See the rankings
The Trust Leaderboard shows which products real customers endorse. Rankings are updated on every page load.