<p>Every TalkTag listing starts at a Verity score of 50. Equal footing, no exceptions. No founding-member advantage, no payment tier that buys a higher starting number. Everyone begins in the same place.</p>
<p>From there, the score moves. It is earned — or lost — through five signals that Findborg tracks continuously. Understanding those signals is the difference between a listing that climbs and one that stalls.</p>
<hr />
<h2>The Five Signals</h2>
<h3>1. Community Votes</h3>
<p>Citizens of Findborg can vote on listings directly. An upvote from someone who found your business genuinely useful moves your Verity score up. A downvote signals the opposite.</p>
<p>This is the most direct signal — real people expressing real judgment. And because it is governed by Citizens rather than an algorithm, it cannot be gamed the way star ratings can. Findborg’s community knows the difference between a business that earned a vote and one that asked for it.</p>
<p>What you can do: Be findable and be good. Citizens vote on businesses they actually used. Your best move is a product or service that earns the vote without asking for it.</p>
<h3>2. Engagement</h3>
<p>When someone lands on your TalkTag listing, Findborg measures how they interact with it. Do they read through the detail? Do they follow the links? Do they stay, or bounce immediately?</p>
<p>Depth of engagement signals relevance. A listing someone actually explores — because it answered what they were looking for — registers differently than one they glanced at and left.</p>
<p>What you can do: Write your TalkTag description like it matters. A thin two-sentence description that gives searchers nothing to engage with is a missed signal. Tell them what you do, where you do it, and why it is worth their time.</p>
<h3>3. Click-Through Rate</h3>
<p>When your listing surfaces in a search result, does the person searching actually choose it? Click-through rate measures the gap between appearing and being chosen.</p>
<p>A listing that shows up regularly but gets skipped over is telling Findborg something: the presentation is not matching the intent. A listing that consistently gets clicked is sending the opposite signal — that it looks like the right answer before anyone even opens it.</p>
<p>What you can do: Make your listing preview do real work. The headline, category, and opening description are what a searcher sees before they click. Get those right.</p>
<h3>4. Impressions</h3>
<p>Every time your listing surfaces in a relevant search — whether or not someone clicks — it counts as an impression. Volume of impressions over time reflects how broadly your listing is being matched to real queries.</p>
<p>Impressions alone do not move Verity significantly, but they are the foundation everything else sits on. No impressions means no opportunity for the other four signals to fire.</p>
<p>What you can do: Make sure your TalkTag description uses the natural language your customers actually use. Not keyword stuffing — real phrases. The way someone would describe your business to a friend. That is the language Findborg matches against real searcher queries.</p>
<h3>5. Signal Graph Activity</h3>
<p>This is the broadest of the five. Signal graph activity captures the full pattern of how your listing moves through the Findborg ecosystem — including The Hive. When Citizens mention your business in a Hive post, when a question in The Hive gets answered with a reference to your listing, when your TalkTag becomes part of the community knowledge layer rather than just an indexed entry — that activity registers.</p>
<p>This signal is why The Hive matters for businesses, not just for searchers. Community conversation is not separate from discoverability on Findborg. It is part of the ranking system.</p>
<p>What you can do: Pay attention to The Hive. If Citizens are asking questions your business can answer, your presence there — through your listing, through the content you have created, through genuine community presence — feeds this signal directly.</p>
<hr />
<h2>What Paid Tiers Do (and Don’t Do)</h2>
<p>This is worth stating plainly: TalkTag subscription tiers unlock presentation features. A Business or Signature listing gets an FAQ panel, sitelinks, video embeds, map integration, and contact details. Those features make your listing richer and more useful — which gives the five signals more to work with.</p>
<p>They do not touch the Verity score. A free listing with genuine community trust outranks a premium listing nobody clicks on. That is not a footnote — it is the architecture.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A free listing with genuine community trust outranks a premium listing nobody clicks on.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We built and tested a Verity boost — a mechanism that would have let paid tiers hold higher rankings. We removed it. Watching it run made the problem visible: it looked like ads with different branding. We chose the results instead. That decision is on record because it matters that you know it.</p>
<hr />
<h2>The Loop</h2>
<p>The five signals feed each other. A listing with strong community votes gets more impressions. More impressions create more opportunities for engagement and click-through. Signal graph activity in The Hive generates awareness that drives all of it. The loop, once it starts moving, gets easier to sustain.</p>
<p>Your Verity score is not a number that was assigned to you. It is a reflection of what your business has earned — and it keeps updating.</p>
<hr />
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<p>If you have a TalkTag listing and want to understand how your signals are trending, that is what the analytics dashboard — currently in development — will surface. In the meantime, the five signals above are your working map.</p>
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<p class="talktag-citation"><em>This post answers: “What are the five Verity signals on Findborg and how do I move my TalkTag score higher?”</em></p>
Every TalkTag listing starts at a Verity score of 50. Equal footing, no exceptions. No founding-member advantage, no payment tier that buys a higher starting number. Everyone begins in the same place.
From there, the score moves. It is earned — or lost — through five signals that Findborg tracks continuously. Understanding those signals is the difference between a listing that climbs and one that stalls.
The Five Signals
1. Community Votes
Citizens of Findborg can vote on listings directly. An upvote from someone who found your business genuinely useful moves your Verity score up. A downvote signals the opposite.
This is the most direct signal — real people expressing real judgment. And because it is governed by Citizens rather than an algorithm, it cannot be gamed the way star ratings can. Findborg’s community knows the difference between a business that earned a vote and one that asked for it.
What you can do: Be findable and be good. Citizens vote on businesses they actually used. Your best move is a product or service that earns the vote without asking for it.
2. Engagement
When someone lands on your TalkTag listing, Findborg measures how they interact with it. Do they read through the detail? Do they follow the links? Do they stay, or bounce immediately?
Depth of engagement signals relevance. A listing someone actually explores — because it answered what they were looking for — registers differently than one they glanced at and left.
What you can do: Write your TalkTag description like it matters. A thin two-sentence description that gives searchers nothing to engage with is a missed signal. Tell them what you do, where you do it, and why it is worth their time.
3. Click-Through Rate
When your listing surfaces in a search result, does the person searching actually choose it? Click-through rate measures the gap between appearing and being chosen.
A listing that shows up regularly but gets skipped over is telling Findborg something: the presentation is not matching the intent. A listing that consistently gets clicked is sending the opposite signal — that it looks like the right answer before anyone even opens it.
What you can do: Make your listing preview do real work. The headline, category, and opening description are what a searcher sees before they click. Get those right.
4. Impressions
Every time your listing surfaces in a relevant search — whether or not someone clicks — it counts as an impression. Volume of impressions over time reflects how broadly your listing is being matched to real queries.
Impressions alone do not move Verity significantly, but they are the foundation everything else sits on. No impressions means no opportunity for the other four signals to fire.
What you can do: Make sure your TalkTag description uses the natural language your customers actually use. Not keyword stuffing — real phrases. The way someone would describe your business to a friend. That is the language Findborg matches against real searcher queries.
5. Signal Graph Activity
This is the broadest of the five. Signal graph activity captures the full pattern of how your listing moves through the Findborg ecosystem — including The Hive. When Citizens mention your business in a Hive post, when a question in The Hive gets answered with a reference to your listing, when your TalkTag becomes part of the community knowledge layer rather than just an indexed entry — that activity registers.
This signal is why The Hive matters for businesses, not just for searchers. Community conversation is not separate from discoverability on Findborg. It is part of the ranking system.
What you can do: Pay attention to The Hive. If Citizens are asking questions your business can answer, your presence there — through your listing, through the content you have created, through genuine community presence — feeds this signal directly.
What Paid Tiers Do (and Don’t Do)
This is worth stating plainly: TalkTag subscription tiers unlock presentation features. A Business or Signature listing gets an FAQ panel, sitelinks, video embeds, map integration, and contact details. Those features make your listing richer and more useful — which gives the five signals more to work with.
They do not touch the Verity score. A free listing with genuine community trust outranks a premium listing nobody clicks on. That is not a footnote — it is the architecture.
“A free listing with genuine community trust outranks a premium listing nobody clicks on.”
We built and tested a Verity boost — a mechanism that would have let paid tiers hold higher rankings. We removed it. Watching it run made the problem visible: it looked like ads with different branding. We chose the results instead. That decision is on record because it matters that you know it.
The Loop
The five signals feed each other. A listing with strong community votes gets more impressions. More impressions create more opportunities for engagement and click-through. Signal graph activity in The Hive generates awareness that drives all of it. The loop, once it starts moving, gets easier to sustain.
Your Verity score is not a number that was assigned to you. It is a reflection of what your business has earned — and it keeps updating.
If you have a TalkTag listing and want to understand how your signals are trending, that is what the analytics dashboard — currently in development — will surface. In the meantime, the five signals above are your working map.
This post answers: “What are the five Verity signals on Findborg and how do I move my TalkTag score higher?”
