Ranking, matching and paid placement

This page explains how results are ordered and how suppliers are chosen to receive a brief. It is published because a marketplace that will not explain its ranking is asking to be trusted on nothing.

Two stages: filter, then rank

Matching a brief to suppliers happens in two distinct stages, and they do different jobs.

Stage one: hard filters

Hard filters decide who is eligible at all. They are binary, they are not weighted, and no score can overcome them. A supplier is excluded from a brief unless all of the following hold:

• The supplier organisation is verified and not suspended.
• The listing is published, and its service type matches the brief.
• The declared service area covers the country of the deployment.
• The listing supports the robot category or the specific model the brief requires, where the brief names one.
• A schedulable resource exists for the requested dates and is not already held or booked.
• The supplier can meet the lead time the brief implies.
• Any language requirement stated in the brief is met.

If no supplier passes the filters, the buyer is told that, rather than being shown the least bad option.

Stage two: weighted ranking

Suppliers that pass the filters are ordered by a weighted score. The weights in use are:

| Factor | Weight | What it measures | | --- | --- | --- | | Program relevance | 0.35 | How closely the listed programme, capability modes and robot fit what the brief asks for. | | Logistics | 0.25 | Distance and practicality of getting the robot and crew to the venue on the dates given. | | Evidence | 0.20 | Dated verification and capability evidence on file for the specific claim being relied on. | | Reliability | 0.20 | Observed behaviour on the platform: response time, quote follow-through, completed bookings. |

Two further numbers shape the outcome:

• New supplier prior: 0.60. A supplier with no history is given a neutral prior rather than a zero. A zero would mean no new supplier could ever receive a brief and so could never build a history.
• Maximum first-wave recipients: 3. A brief goes to at most three suppliers first. If none of them responds in time, it widens. This exists to protect buyers from a pile of near-identical quotes and suppliers from quoting against a large invisible field.

The current weights are recorded as version 1 in the platform. They are a design hypothesis about what makes a good match, not a validated algorithm, and they will change as there is evidence. When they change, the version number changes and this page is updated with it.

Paid placement

Paid placement exists on this platform. It is sold as featured listings, category and country sponsorships, directory tiers, banners and newsletter slots.

It works under three rules that are not negotiable:

1. Every paid placement is labelled as sponsored, at the point where it appears, in the same visual hierarchy as the content around it.
2. Paid placement is a separate block. It sits above or beside the organic results; it is never mixed into them.
3. No paid placement reorders organic results, and none affects matching. Buying an ad does not change a supplier's ranking score, does not make them eligible for a brief they would otherwise fail the filters for, and does not place them in the first wave. Comparison pages are never reordered by payment at all.

Subscription plans follow the same rule. A plan buys listing capacity, seats and tooling. No plan buys ranking.

The business directory

The directory at /directory is separate from the marketplace. Nothing in it can be booked, and no brief is ever sent to a directory entry.

Each entry carries one of these labels where it appears:

• Verified supplier on humanoid4rent: the firm is also a verified supplier on the marketplace, and the entry links to its supplier profile and packages.
• Related to the operator: the firm is connected to whoever operates humanoid4rent. The relationship is disclosed on the entry and on the About page, and it changes nothing about the order.
• Unverified profile: the entry was compiled by humanoid4rent from public information on the firm's own website, with the source and the date it was last checked. The firm has not reviewed it. It can take the profile over, correct it or have it removed, and removal does not require taking it over.

Within each group (rental companies, event agencies, show productions) entries are listed alphabetically by name. Being a verified supplier, being related to the operator or having been compiled from public information is a label, not a sort key. Directory entries carry no prices, ratings or logos.

Paid directory tiers, when they are sold, appear in a separate labelled block and never change the order of the entries around them. No paid directory tier is sold at present.

What we do not do

We do not accept payment to remove a competitor from a result set, to suppress a review, or to alter a comparison. We do not invent ratings for suppliers who have no completed bookings.

Reporting a problem with ranking

If you believe a result set is wrong or a paid placement is not properly labelled, report it through the reporting page. Reports about labelling are treated as urgent.