How does ABA Rank decide the order of vendors on a category page?

Every category applies the same ranker to every listing. The order is produced by five disclosed signals: profile completeness, recency of last verification, qualified review presence and quality, Pro/Sponsor tier signal, and primary-category fit. Sponsored entries sit above the ranked list, are visually distinct, and never reorder organic rank.

Does ABA Rank take money to change ranking position?

No. The Sponsor tier carries a capped, disclosed weight worth at most 25 of the 100 Index points and the Pro tier contributes a smaller capped tier signal. The remaining 75+ points are operational — completeness, verification, reviews, and recency — and cannot be purchased. ABA Rank does not negotiate slots, accept paid reorders, or hand-tune the ranked list for customers or prospects.

What is the difference between sponsored placement and ranked listings?

Sponsored slots appear above the ranked list, are flagged as sponsored, and are paid placements. Ranked listings appear below and are produced by the disclosed signals. The two never mix. If a sponsoring vendor also appears in the ranked list, their organic rank reflects only the operational signals — the sponsored slot sits on top of that, not instead of it.

How often are rankings recomputed?

The Index is recomputed nightly. Reviewed corrections from the suggest-an-edit queue and freshly verified profiles flow into the next rerank pass. Top 10 leaderboards are republished quarterly and summarised in the print edition.

Which ranking signals matter most for vendors?

Profile completeness is the largest lever vendors control directly — every present field (logo, description, website, HQ, founding year, employee band, integrations, pricing, certifications, payor coverage) pulls the score up; blanks pull it down. Verification status and qualified review volume and quality are the next largest. Tier signal is capped and disclosed.

Can I see the exact ranking formula and weights?

ABA Rank publishes the inputs and the rules but not the exact numerical weights. Inputs are listed in full at /how-we-rank: profile completeness, verification recency, qualified-review signals, tier signal, and primary-category fit. The clinic-finder ranker source is open at lib/rank/clinics-search.ts. Withholding the precise weights prevents adversarial profile-stuffing while keeping the methodology fully auditable.

What can I do if I think a ranking looks wrong?

File a correction through /suggest-edit. Submissions land in the moderation queue, get reviewed by the editorial team, and reviewed corrections feed directly into the next nightly rerank pass. ABA Rank does not let vendors see neighbours’ scores or submit counter-signals — corrections are about underlying facts (services, locations, credentials, pricing), not about negotiating position.

§ Methodology

How we rank.

Every category page on ABA Rank shows a ranked list of vendors. The order is produced by a consistent methodology applied uniformly to every listing in that category. No hidden manual boosts for customers, no negotiated slots.

§ 01 · Signals

The signals.

We do not publish the exact weighting formula. We do publish the inputs that can affect a vendor’s position, and we apply those inputs the same way across vendors in a category.

Profile completeness: How fully the profile is filled in — logo, description, website, HQ, founding year, employee band, integrations, pricing information. Every present field pulls the score up; blanks pull it down. This is the lever vendors control directly: the more accurate and complete the profile, the higher the rank.
Recency: Profiles we’ve verified recently are treated as fresher than profiles that have gone a long time without a review. This prevents stale entries from squatting on top slots.
Verified reviews: Published review signals can improve rank when they meet our quality gates. Verified reviews carry additional trust because they are tied to a completed verification workflow, not just a public submission. Review quality, review volume, review freshness, and verified-review presence all matter.
Tier signal: Protier vendors — those who have claimed their profile and pay for the enhanced listing — receive a limited tier signal. That’s the only paid input to the ranked list. Sponsor placements are visually distinct from organic rank and appear in Sponsored slots above the ranked list.
Primary-category fit: A vendor can live in multiple categories, but every profile names exactly one as its primary. On a category page, vendors for whom the current category is primary are a better fit than vendors listed only as a secondary match. This keeps a practice-management suite from crowding out a session-note specialist on the session-notes page.

§ 02 · Sponsored

What we don’t do.

We don’t take money to reorder the ranked list. We don’t hand-tune the order for customers or prospects. We don’t let vendors see their neighbors’ scores or submit counter-signals. We don’t promise top-five placement as part of any commercial agreement. The methodology is applied consistently.

See a ranking that looks wrong? Tell us — the suggest-an-edit form goes to the moderation queue and reviewed corrections flow directly into the next rerank pass (nightly).

§ 04 · Clinic finder

Clinic finder ranking.

Results on Find ABAare sorted into four groups: paid & claimed (Pro / Sponsor), claimed free, pending claims, and unclaimed. A claimed clinic always outranks an unclaimed one, regardless of completeness or other signals.

Within a group, we sort by waitlist availability (accepting first), profile completeness, and recency of last verification. Sponsor clinics carry a visible Sponsoredchip; we cap how many can appear near the top so a single big spender can’t crowd out a city page.

State pages, plan-only pages, and state-plus-plan pages use the same ranker as city pages — applied to the broader result set. The four ranking groups (claimed-tier, claimed, pending, unclaimed), the within-group sort signals (waitlist availability, completeness, last verified), and the sponsor cap all behave identically across every /find-aba surface.

Source · lib/rank/clinics-search.ts

§ 05 · FAQ

Methodology questions, answered.

The questions vendors, families, and reporters ask most often about how the directory is ranked — answered against the same disclosed methodology described above.

How does ABA Rank decide the order of vendors on a category page?: Every category applies the same ranker to every listing. The order is produced by five disclosed signals: profile completeness, recency of last verification, qualified review presence and quality, Pro/Sponsor tier signal, and primary-category fit. Sponsored entries sit above the ranked list, are visually distinct, and never reorder organic rank.
Does ABA Rank take money to change ranking position?: No. The Sponsor tier carries a capped, disclosed weight worth at most 25 of the 100 Index points and the Pro tier contributes a smaller capped tier signal. The remaining 75+ points are operational — completeness, verification, reviews, and recency — and cannot be purchased. ABA Rank does not negotiate slots, accept paid reorders, or hand-tune the ranked list for customers or prospects.
What is the difference between sponsored placement and ranked listings?: Sponsored slots appear above the ranked list, are flagged as sponsored, and are paid placements. Ranked listings appear below and are produced by the disclosed signals. The two never mix. If a sponsoring vendor also appears in the ranked list, their organic rank reflects only the operational signals — the sponsored slot sits on top of that, not instead of it.
How often are rankings recomputed?: The Index is recomputed nightly. Reviewed corrections from the suggest-an-edit queue and freshly verified profiles flow into the next rerank pass. Top 10 leaderboards are republished quarterly and summarised in the print edition.
Which ranking signals matter most for vendors?: Profile completeness is the largest lever vendors control directly — every present field (logo, description, website, HQ, founding year, employee band, integrations, pricing, certifications, payor coverage) pulls the score up; blanks pull it down. Verification status and qualified review volume and quality are the next largest. Tier signal is capped and disclosed.
How does the clinic finder ranking on /find-aba differ from category rankings?: Find ABA results are sorted into four groups before the within-group sort: paid and claimed (Pro / Sponsor) first, then claimed free, then pending claims, then unclaimed. Within each group, results sort by waitlist availability (accepting first), profile completeness, and recency of last verification. A claimed clinic always outranks an unclaimed one regardless of completeness, and a sponsor cap prevents one operator from crowding out a city or state page.
Can I see the exact ranking formula and weights?: ABA Rank publishes the inputs and the rules but not the exact numerical weights. Inputs are listed in full at /how-we-rank: profile completeness, verification recency, qualified-review signals, tier signal, and primary-category fit. The clinic-finder ranker source is open at lib/rank/clinics-search.ts. Withholding the precise weights prevents adversarial profile-stuffing while keeping the methodology fully auditable.
What can I do if I think a ranking looks wrong?: File a correction through /suggest-edit. Submissions land in the moderation queue, get reviewed by the editorial team, and reviewed corrections feed directly into the next nightly rerank pass. ABA Rank does not let vendors see neighbours’ scores or submit counter-signals — corrections are about underlying facts (services, locations, credentials, pricing), not about negotiating position.

§ 06 · Editorial policy

Editorial policy.

Cluster pages (our “best of” software guides) layer editorial judgment on top of the ranked Index. To keep that layer accountable, every editorial action is governed by the four rules below — and the rules themselves are public.

Cluster seed rules

Every cluster roster starts from the same place: the ABA Rank Index for the cluster’s target category (the rank order recorded in vendor_category.rankPosition). For cross-category clusters like Best ABA Software, we seed from the top-N vendors by global rank score. Editors may reorder vendors after seeding, but any insertion outside the seeded top-N requires an editorial blurb explaining the move — and the override is logged (see below).

Override logging

Every editorial reorder writes an auditLog row with action cluster_roster_override, recording the previous and new sort positions and the editor’s required justification text. The audit trail is permanent and any vendor can request access to entries that affect their listing.

Takedown process

Vendors who believe their inclusion on a cluster page is inaccurate, or who prefer not to be listed, can request removal by emailing editor@abarank.com. We respond within five business days. Approved removals are reflected on the next publish cycle.

Review cadence

Each cluster’s last_reviewed_attimestamp is touched whenever the cluster is (re)published. After 90 days without a re-review, the cluster surfaces a staleness warning in our admin console; editors revisit pricing, integrations, and editorial copy before re-publishing. The “Reviewed {month year}” chip on each cluster page reflects the most recent review.

§ 07 · Changelog

Methodology changelog.

We disclose substantive methodology changes here so vendors and reporters can see exactly how rank inputs evolve over time. Effective dates are when the change began affecting rank order, not when the document was published.

Methodology v1.6 — effective May 2026

Methodology v1.6 publishes the coach (provider) ranking inputs and discloses the capped paid-boost ceiling, so families can see exactly how Featured coach placements are bounded.

Coach ranking score = verified credentials + profile completeness + responsiveness + recency.
Paid boost is capped and disclosed: a Featured coach receives at most a +0.10 tier boost (FEATURED_BOOST_MAX), Pro receives +0.05 — the tier component is weighted at 0.15, so tier lifts a coach by at most ~1.5% of the final score and can never override the unbuyable base score.
Featured search results are labeled “Featured — paid” so families can see paid placements.

Methodology v1.5 — effective May 2026

Methodology v1.5 adds five new vendor profile fields, normalizes the integrations table, and rewards vendors who publish more transparent product data.

Five new vendor profile fields: pricing_starting_usd, pricing_notes, deployment_model, free_tier, and last_price_verified_at. Each is rendered on the public profile where set.
Normalized vendor_integration table — vendors list their integrations once and they surface across every cluster the vendor appears on, instead of being re-typed per cluster.
+5 points added to the 50-point profile-completeness portion of the Index, capped at one point each across the five fields above (free tier explicitly set, deployment model disclosed, at least one pricing field present, at least one integration recorded, and a price-verification date set).
New cluster-page editorial process — every cluster roster is seeded from the Index and every reorder is logged. See editorial policy above for the full rules.
Effective date: May 2026.