What money cannot buy
Position in a ranked list or an ordered result set is not for sale. There is no package, no tier, and no advertising spend that moves a firm up. This is not a courtesy: the Federal Trade Commission treats paid rankings as deceptive on their face, and takes the position that disclosing the payment does not fix it.
We also do not accept equity from, or grant editorial input to, any robot manufacturer or integrator. No OEM sponsors a brand page. No integrator reviews their own listing copy before it publishes, beyond correcting facts.
What a firm can pay for
- Introductions. When a buyer describes a project, we route it to matching firms. Firms pay for the introduction, not for placement.
- Verification. A one-time check that the firm is who it says it is, shown as a Verified mark.
- Profile depth. Portfolio entries, project photography, office locations, and contact routing on their own profile page.
- Advertising, which is labelled as advertising, sits outside the ordered results, and is never mixed into them.
The criteria, in order of weight
- Documented work in the category. Installs we can trace to a source, weighted by how closely they match the page subject. A firm with eleven palletizing cells outranks one with two on a palletizing page and neither ranks on a welding page for that reason.
- Verification status. A firm that has confirmed its identity and its certifications ranks above one that has not, because the claims can be checked.
- Geographic fit. Distance from the buyer where a location is known, then declared service area.
- Third-party credentials. CSIA certification, ISO registration, and OEM partner status, each shown with the evidence behind it.
- Profile completeness. A tiebreaker only. It never outweighs documented work.
Shortlists are a different thing
When you describe a project through Get matched, we send you three to five firms. That is a response to your brief, not a published ranking, and it is built by a person. Within the set of firms that genuinely qualify, we may route to firms that pay for introductions. Every shortlist includes at least one firm that does not.
What we do not use
There are no buyer reviews or star ratings anywhere on this site. In a market where a single project runs six or seven figures and a plant may buy one cell a decade, review volume measures age and marketing budget rather than quality, and the incentive to game it is overwhelming. We would rather show you what a firm has built.
Telling us we are wrong
If a listing misstates a fact about your firm, or an ordered set looks indefensible, say so and we will correct it and publish what changed. Facts we cannot source come down.