Comparison platforms · 4 min read

Charging the Companies You Compare

On my platforms, providers paid. Some paid for specific positions, at real monthly prices. The honest question is not whether money was involved. It is whether the buyer was still better off for using the page.

By Jeev Trika

Every comparison platform has to answer one question about its own business: who pays? Buyers rarely will. So, almost always, the companies being compared do. That was true on every platform I built. Providers paid to be considered, and many paid for placement by the month.

I am not going to pretend otherwise, and I am not going to turn it into a confession either. The interesting question is the one a buyer should ask: can a platform charge the companies it compares and still be useful to me?

What was actually sold

The record is clear enough to state plainly.

In 2009, when an agency in New Delhi wanted a guaranteed top-ten position written into its contract, I would not promise rank. The agreement offered a credit instead:

We can’t promise rank (as you noticed in 2.2); and so we say if you do not rank - you get a credit.

By the mid-2010s, positions themselves had prices. In December 2014 an agency that had done well from a top-three listing asked to keep one. My reply:

A top 3 slot is going for 30/40k a month right now man. Maybe we can work out something for top 10…?

In February 2016 I proposed terms to another agency “for the #1 slot”: an additional $20,000 a month plus 20% of the revenue from the clients it won through us, with the bill stepping down by $5,000 a month after any termination rather than a lifetime revenue share.

In 2018 an agency in Singapore wanted more exposure in other countries’ lists. The pricing depended on the position and the market: top three in two smaller markets at $500 per category, number thirteen in Australia at that price, and number two in Australia at $10,500 a month.

That is what “providers paid for placement” meant in practice.

How it was disclosed

Disclosure changed over the years, and not always in the buyer’s direction.

In 2010 I sent the developers a long list of changes to topseos. It removed sponsored listings and banners from the pages and put ranked companies first. It also removed the membership badges that showed which firms were paying members. The pages became cleaner. They also stopped telling the buyer who was paying.

In 2019 I sent our developer the text of a disclosure page for the rankings. It described a scoring process across five factors per category, plus softer questions: “Is the company a fly-by-night operator? Do they attend conferences? Speak at them? Are they hiring employees or laying them off?” It said that “Only the top scoring companies make a given list.” And it said, in the same document:

We charge a standard fee from companies for our time to evaluate. If a vendor doesn’t have the finances available and we deem them to be a star performer based on research done on another tool or service, we may still highlight them on our Rankings list.

Both statements were true at the same time, and that is the tension at the centre of the model. The method page talked about scores. The sales emails talked about positions and prices.

Where it costs trust

Going by my own records, the line is not between charging and not charging. It is here:

When the buyer cannot tell what was paid for. A paid listing labelled as paid is advertising. A paid position presented as a verdict is something else. Removing the badges in 2010 moved us in the wrong direction on that.

When position is sold instead of consideration. Charging a provider to be evaluated, or to be shown to the buyers in its category, is one thing. Selling the order of the list is another. The more the order is for sale, the less the list tells the buyer.

When the provider is not getting value either. In July 2025 an agency in the top position on one of our ranking pages told me it could not trace any viable leads. My answer set out what we could measure, including 1,700 clicks to the page where it ranked first, and then offered it an exit:

I would suggest if this is not working, let’s not continue and end in July itself. I am not here to waste your time or mine.

A paid position that produces nothing for the provider is not a good product for anyone, and keeping someone in it would only have postponed the end.

Can it still be useful?

It can be, on conditions. The categories have to match what buyers are actually choosing between. The providers on the list have to be ones a buyer would be glad to have found. The evaluation has to be real, and the page has to say plainly that providers pay and what they pay for. Under those conditions the buyer is still better off than with a search result full of agencies’ own advertising.

Without them, it is a directory with a ranking-shaped layout, and buyers eventually notice.

Those are the conditions I hold a platform to when building one with a client.