Research disclaimer

What our numbers are

Every score we publish decomposes into the factors that produced it, each with its value, the evidence behind it, and how confident we are. If a score cannot be explained that way, we do not publish it. We do not produce unexplained ratings.

What they are not

A score is an assessment of published material, made by a person on a date, against a method we describe. It is not an audit. It does not verify that a business's claims about itself are true. It does not measure revenue, service quality or creditworthiness, and it should not be used to judge any of those.

Estimates are labelled as estimates

Search volumes and market-size figures are estimates, most of them published by others. We label them as estimates every time they appear, name where they came from, and say what they do not measure. An estimated monthly search figure counts searches, not people, and baskets of keywords built by different publishers are not comparable with each other.

Where we have nothing, we say so

An empty result on this site means we hold no evidence, not that the answer is zero or that the subject scored badly. We do not fill a gap with an inference and we do not guess a figure to complete a page. Where a page says "insufficient evidence", that is the finding.

Assessments of businesses that did not ask for one

Some of what we publish concerns businesses that have not engaged us. Those assessments read published material only. If you are the subject of one and believe it is wrong, tell us: we will look again, and correct it if we got it wrong. We would rather be corrected than be confidently mistaken in public.

No advice

Nothing on this site or in a report is legal, financial, tax or investment advice. Research informs a decision. It does not make it, and it does not carry it.