How ranking works

Two things, and only two: how often a brand answers the creators who apply to it, and how quickly. Both are measured over the last 90 days, so what a brand did last quarter stops counting and what it does this month starts.

An application counts once it has had a fair chance to be answered. Answering it means accepting it, declining it, or replying to the creator. A decline counts as an answer. Brands are not ranked on how often they say yes.

Speed is banded rather than continuous, so a single slow week does not move anything: replies within 2 days, then 7 days, then 14 days, and slower than that.

A brand's map presence is Strong, Normal, or Reduced. Strong brands are shown more prominently. Reduced brands are not hidden, dimmed, or removed. They simply stop being promoted: they lose the highlight, they can be grouped with nearby brands instead of always showing on their own, and they sit lower in the list.

Nothing is ever removed from the map for answering slowly. Every brand on CollabsMap is findable, searchable, and applyable at every level.

A brand with fewer than 5 applications that have had a fair chance to be answered is not measured yet. Its own dashboard calls this settling. It is never penalised for being new, and it appears at the same strength as an established Normal brand.

Above that, the measure is smoothed so that a brand's first few applications cannot swing it too far in either direction. Every brand is treated as though it also had 5 extra applications answered at 50%, which pulls a very small sample back towards the middle.

Brands on a paid plan receive 8 Featured days a month. On those days the brand appears with a Featured treatment on the map, at the top of the list, and in that day's creator emails. Every Featured placement is labelled "Featured" wherever it appears.

No more than 2 Featured brands appear for any one destination on any one day, so the days are scheduled across the month rather than sold to the highest bidder.

Featured placement pauses for a brand that stops answering, meaning one that answers fewer than 50% of the creators who apply to it. Reply speed never causes a pause. A brand that answers everyone slowly keeps every day it paid for.

Payment does not change a brand's map presence. There are no points, no boosts, and no way to buy a better position in the ordinary ranking. A paying brand and a free brand that answer their applicants identically are ranked identically.

What a paying brand gets is the labelled Featured days described above, and nothing else about ranking.