Expert selection
When selecting which experts to include in our recommendations, we take into consideration the following but not limited to criteria for both publications and contributors. The following is an overview of our criteria.
Publications
- A track record of research that demonstrates proactive testing and gathering of the details of the service, features, user reviews, and more.
- Well-written and quality syntheses of the weight of pros vs. cons, competitive comparisons, features, and who it is best for.
- Legitimate advertiser disclosure statements.
- Publishes both negative and positive reviews, not just marketing content.
- Credible rating system and website design.
- Traffic over 100,000 visits per month according to SimilarWeb.
Contributors
- Experience with at least 2 years background in their respective category, education, or work experience related to the product or service being written about.
- Quality insight that demonstrates the ability to tie in how each aspect of the service plays a role in the readers potential experience with the product or service.
- Demonstration of being information-driven, rather than opinion-driven.
- Ability to take into perspective and acknowledgement of people in different financial situations of than their own in order to make the best recommendations for the population as a whole or a subset.
If you are a publication or contributor and would like to be considered for inclusion, please contact us.
Scoring
The recommendation percentage is a compilation of binary yes or no recommendations from experts. When there is a rating available anything at or above a 7/10 is considered a “Yes” recommendation, anything below is considered a “No” recommendation. When there is no rating or explicit ‘bottom line’ recommendation provided, we use our best efforts to determine the recommendation. This may include whether the expert outweighs the pros vs. cons, if the expert recommends it for a specific segment of the population, or if there are more positive highlights than negative throughout. If a recommendation cannot be determined, we assign a neutral verdict, and those are noted but not included in the score.
Example: If 7 out of 10 experts give the service a “Yes” recommendation, it would receive a 70% recommendation percentage.
An average expert rating is a secondary metric that takes an average of those who did provide a numerical score and gives an average. This is included in order to give further insight on the extent of positive of negative the experts rated the service, in addition to if there was an overall recommended it or not.
Example: If Expert A gave a 5 rating, Expert B gave a 4 rating, and Expert C gave a 3 rating, the average expert rating would be a 4/5, or 80%.