You rank us, then sell us a fix for the problem you published. Isn’t that a protection racket?
It is the right question to ask, and the answer is a check you can run rather than a reassurance you have to accept.
Position cannot be bought. The inclusion rule and the scoring formula are published before an edition runs. Anyone can see how the list is drawn and how scores are computed, and any figure traces to stored answers on request. There is no step where we decide anything about a vendor based on whether they might buy something.
Clients are disclosed. Clients are named in the methodology of each edition published during the engagement and for twelve months after it ends; where a genuine legal or contractual restriction prevents naming one, that edition gives the number withheld instead. The methodology is part of the edition page, for your competitors to read. Buying from us makes your relationship with us more visible, not less. The disclosure is here, and it currently names nobody, because there are no clients yet.
And the exposure is not ours to invent. When your buyers ask these systems, the systems answer. We did not create that. We made it visible — and it is better seen from someone who publishes their working than discovered through a deal you lost without knowing why.
The part we will not soften
The index is the reason we are worth hiring. The day it flatters clients it is worth nothing to anybody, including the client.
That is not a promise about our character. It is the structure: a measurement that bends for whoever is paying stops being a credential, and a credential is the entire product. There is no version of this business where quietly favouring a client is profitable.