The method
How the Acclaimedly Score and rankings work
The score is a public number, so the way it is reached is public too. This page says what it counts, what it deliberately counts for less, and what no amount of money will change.
What the score counts
Recommendations, and the standing of the people who wrote them. Nothing else moves it far.
Who recommended you
Every recommendation is written by a named member with their own profile, about work they had a part in. Anonymous praise is not accepted anywhere on Acclaimedly, so there is none to count.
How well recommended they are
A recommendation from someone many people recommend carries further than one from a profile nobody has vouched for. Standing is worked out for everyone at once, in rounds, until it settles.
When it was written
Recent work counts for more, and older work keeps a floor: a recommendation from five years ago still says something true, so it never falls to nothing.
What it was for
A recommendation that names the products or services it is about is worth a little more than one that does not, because it says something more specific.
What counts for less, and why
Any measure of reputation will be gamed if the way to game it is obvious. These are the obvious ways.
Two profiles recommending each other
Both directions are reduced. Mutual recommendations are often genuine, so they are not thrown away, but they cannot be traded up.
Clients of the same agency
Where we can see that recommendations circulate inside one arrangement, they are reduced the same way.
Your own staff
Staff cannot recommend the business they work for, and the business cannot recommend them. A business does share, partly, in what its staff are recommended for.
Paperwork without people
Verified credentials, awards and a complete profile lift a score, and together they are held to a share of what the recommendations themselves are worth. A profile with no recommendations gains nothing from any of them.
The scale
No score is shown at all below 1 recommendations. There is no number small enough to be fair to a profile nobody has recommended yet, so there is no number.
43
Where the scale starts, when a profile is first scored
70
A name people in the area would recognise
99
Reserved for a profile that stands above a large, busy market
Each new recommendation is worth a little less than the one before it, so a score cannot be reached by volume alone, and the difference between a good profile and an outstanding one stays visible.
Rankings
A ranking compares like with like: the same category, the same city, and for businesses the same size band, so a firm of six is never measured against a firm of six hundred.
- Every ranking names its field
- - “Top 3 most recommended of 41 mortgage brokers in Sydney”. The number after “of” is the part that cannot be dressed up: “Top 3” on its own is what a directory sells.
- A band has to be earned
- and never describes more than a quarter of the field, so Top 3 needs twelve, Top 5 needs twenty and Top 10 needs forty. Below that the position stands on its own: “2nd most recommended of 6”.
- A large field
- is described as a top percentage, and only once enough profiles hold that tier for it to mean something. It still names the field: “Top 5% most recommended of 1,240”.
- Every ranking is dated
- and names its field and its month, so it can be repeated by a person or an answer engine without anything being left out.
- Milestones are permanent
- A hundred recommendations is a hundred recommendations; it is recorded with the month it was reached and it does not expire.
Milestones
A milestone is a plain count that does not depend on anybody else: the tenth recommendation, the fiftieth, the hundredth. It is stated with the number and nothing more, it cannot be lost when somebody else gains one, and it is never a ranking.
Milestones are shown where the profession allows a score at all, and a member chooses which of the ones they hold to show.
How often it changes
Scores and rankings are worked out once a month. A run is built, checked by a person against the spread it produces, and then published - every profile changes at the same moment, so nobody is comparing this month’s number with last month’s.
Regulated professions
In some professions a public ranking would cut across the rules the profession is held to: law, medicine, financial advice and others, and the rules differ by country and by state. Where that is so, no score, ranking or badge is shown for those profiles, to anyone.
Those profiles still carry recommendations written by named people, credentials that have been checked, and everything else a profile holds. They are not marked as lesser, and nothing on the page apologises for what is missing.
The rules are set per profession and per place by Acclaimedly staff, not by the member, and a member cannot switch them on for themselves.
Reporting a recommendation
Every recommendation carries a report link, open to anybody signed in. Say what is wrong with it: that it is not genuine, that it is about the wrong profile, or something else. A person reads every report.
A recommendation that should not be there is removed and stops counting towards the score at the next monthly run. A member cannot delete a recommendation written about them, and nobody can buy the removal of one. Accounts that write false recommendations are suspended.
What paying for a plan does not do
- It does not raise a score, and it never will.
- It does not change a ranking, or the field a profile is ranked in.
- It does not remove a recommendation, and a member cannot delete one written about them.
- It does not buy a place in search results.
A plan buys room on the profile - more products, more photos, more of the badges a member has already earned - and the tools around it. It buys nothing that is supposed to be earned. See what each plan includes.
Your own choices
An individual can keep themselves out of rankings entirely and still hold a profile and recommendations. Some professions are regulated in ways that make a public ranking inappropriate; in those, no score, ranking or badge is shown to anyone, and the profile is not made to look lesser for it.
How Acclaimedly works covers the rest: profiles, recommendations and what a complete page is for.
You and your company
A firm and a person working under their own name are ranked in separate lists, so somebody who holds a profile for themselves and one for their business can be placed in both. What cannot happen is the same person appearing twice in one list, which is what a one-person company and its owner would otherwise do.
You and your company shows what that looks like, and which of the two is placed.