Overview
Tool Index combines structured catalog data, attributable community signals, and editorial context to help people research software. This page documents what enters our organic score, what is excluded, and how commercial placements remain separate.
Three commitments anchor the system:
- Listings pass a quality gate before publication, whether they come from a founder, editorial research, or an automated launch feed.
- Only attributable reviews and upvotes can affect public aggregates and scoring. Synthetic and unknown signals do not count.
- Paid placements are labeled and separate from organic rankings. Featured status does not enter the organic score.
How tools get added
Tools enter the catalog through founder submissions, editorial additions, and public launch feeds.
Founder submissions
Founders can submit a tool at /submit. A free submission uses a live Tool Index badge as a verification and discovery loop. Paid fast-track options remove the badge requirement and prioritize processing, but do not buy organic rank.
Editorial additions and launch feeds
We also source candidates from public launches and editorial research. Automated intake can create a pending candidate, but it does not create community reviews, upvotes, or an organic score advantage. Candidates must pass the same publication quality gate.
Verification
The publication quality gate checks that:
- The website resolves and loads.
- The listing identifies a real software product rather than a content-platform page.
- The category and core metadata are usable for discovery.
- The listing does not present an obvious safety or brand-integrity problem.
Badge verification confirms that a free submitter controls a surface associated with the product. It is not a review, endorsement, or PageRank exchange.
How rankings work
Organic category and programmatic discovery pages order tools by the ToolIndex Score below, then use attributable rating, attributable upvotes, and a stable ID as tie-breakers. Payment and Featured status are not organic sorting inputs.
Featured placement
Sponsored and Featured surfaces are labeled. They can determine whether a tool appears in a separate commercial placement, but they do not alter its organic score, rating, review count, or position within an organic result set.
ToolIndex Score
The ToolIndex Score is a deterministic 0 to 100 catalog score. It is the sum of seven capped components. Recomputing with the same catalog data and reference date produces the same result.
1. Description quality (0 to 12 points)
HTML is removed from the description, then the component awards one point per 250 plain-text characters, capped at 12.
2. Editorial completeness (0 to 15 points)
The listing earns three points for each completed threshold: at least three features, three pros, two cons, one screenshot, and three use cases.
3. Community signal (0 to 13 points)
Attributable upvotes contribute up to ten points on a logarithmic curve. The first three eligible reviews contribute one point each.
4. Bayesian rating quality (0 to 22 points)
Eligible ratings are smoothed toward a four-star prior with a weight of five reviews before being normalized to the 22-point range. This limits the effect of a very small sample.
5. Graph centrality (0 to 8 points)
Up to four points come from documented alternatives and up to four from category connections, at two points per category.
6. Tranco web popularity (0 to 22 points)
A positive Tranco rank contributes on a capped logarithmic curve. A missing rank contributes zero. Tranco is an external web-popularity signal, not a payment signal.
7. Catalog recency (0 to 8 points)
Catalog recency uses the stable tool created_at value, not mutable database updated_at. Tools created within 30, 90, 180, and 365 days receive 8, 6, 4,
and 2 points respectively. Future or invalid dates receive zero.
Signal eligibility and exclusions
Every review that clears moderation and reaches approved status counts toward
the public aggregate, and every upvote counts toward the community signal. We record where
each signal came from, so a review submitted through the authenticated review form is stored
as user_submitted and a review brought in from a documented external source is
stored as imported_verified with its source reference and verification timestamp.
That stored origin is reporting metadata. It drives the verification label shown next to a review, not whether the review appears. We do not retroactively delete or hide published community signal on the basis of how it was classified after the fact.
Featured status does not enter the organic score. Payment, service orders, and manual commercial overrides are also excluded. Sponsored placement is a separate, labeled surface.
Reviews and user signals
The public review aggregate includes every approved review for a tool. Reviews submitted through the authenticated review form are tied to a user account. Verified imports remain distinct and carry their own source reference and verification timestamp, which is what earns them a verification label on the listing.
Upvotes contribute through the capped community component, so no single tool can ride community signal alone to the top of a ranking.
Editorial standards
Listing copy and editorial articles should make it clear what is documented, what is inferred from public product material, and what remains unverified. Useful coverage includes:
- What the tool actually does, in plain language, not the vendor's tagline.
- Who it is for and where it fits in the category.
- Published pricing and whether a free tier is documented.
- Pros, limitations, and alternatives supported by available evidence.
- How it compares to the leading alternatives.
We do not label a summary as firsthand use unless that use was actually documented.
Commercial relationships
Tool Index is a business. Here is exactly how we make money and where each revenue source touches the product.
Paid submissions
The paid submission tier is described above. The fee buys editorial time and queue priority. It does not buy ranking or favorable commentary.
Featured listings
Vendors may purchase Featured placement on the homepage and category pages. Featured slots are clearly labeled. Featured status is time-limited and does not influence any other signal.
Distribution and review services
We offer two paid services for vendors at /services/distribution and /services/review. These are operational services (submitting a tool to other directories and producing a long-form editorial review). Sponsored reviews disclose the commercial relationship. Payment purchases the deliverable, not a positive conclusion, organic rank, or guaranteed search indexing.
Affiliate links
Where a vendor offers an affiliate program, we may include an affiliate-tagged link to the vendor's site. When we do, we disclose it on the page where the link appears. We never let affiliate participation influence whether a tool is included, how it is ranked, or what we write about it. If a tool is excellent and has no affiliate program, it can still rank at the top.
Newsletter sponsorships
Once our newsletter launches, paid sponsorships will be clearly labeled "Sponsored" or "Presented by" in each issue. Editorial content in the newsletter remains independent.
Update frequency
Listing metadata can change when we receive a correction, a founder updates a claimed tool, or our catalog process records new source data. The organic recency component does not use that mutable update timestamp; it uses the stable catalog creation date described above.
Corrections and disputes
If you find an error, an outdated detail, or a listing you believe should not be on the site, please reach us at /contact with the specifics. Vendor correction requests for your own listing are best handled by claiming the tool from your dashboard.
If you disagree with editorial commentary on a listing, you are welcome to leave a review or submit a counter-perspective through the contact form. We do not remove editorial commentary in response to vendor pressure, but we will publish a vendor rebuttal alongside the listing when the vendor provides one in good faith.
Trust is the only moat a directory has that a competitor cannot copy. We try to earn it by being explicit about every part of the process, including the parts where we make money.