This is a short story about a feature we built, what it looked like in testing, and why we chose to remove it.
We are telling it because we think it says something important about what kind of platform Findborg is — and because we believe the people who use Findborg deserve to know how decisions get made here.
What the Verity Boost Was
Early in development, we built something called a Verity boost.
Verity is our integrity score — the ranking signal that determines how listings appear in Findborg results. It starts at 50 for every listing. It goes up based on real signals: community engagement, relevance, click-through, Hive activity. You earn it. You cannot buy it.
The Verity boost was an exception to that last part. It was a modest ranking bonus we considered offering to paid TalkTag subscribers — businesses on higher subscription tiers. The logic was straightforward: businesses investing more in the platform get a small visibility edge.
It seemed reasonable. A lot of platforms do some version of this. We built it. We tested it.
What We Saw in Testing
When we ran the boost in testing, the results looked like ads.
Not labeled ads. Not sponsored placements. Just results that were slightly, consistently elevated because someone paid more — without the searcher knowing that was happening. The listings were real businesses with real TalkTag listings. But their position in results reflected their subscription tier, not their actual relevance to the search.
That is the definition of a paid placement. It does not matter that we called it something else. It does not matter that the boost was small. When you look at what it actually was — a ranking advantage purchased with money — there is no honest way to call it anything other than an ad.
“I want to find a search platform that does not give businesses better rankings because they paid more — where results are based on real quality and relevance, not ad spend.”
Why We Removed It
We removed it because the integrity of the results is the product.
That is not a brand line. It is a functional statement. If searchers cannot trust that Findborg results reflect genuine relevance rather than who paid the most, the platform is not worth using. And if the platform is not worth using, the businesses who invest in TalkTag listings have no audience to reach.
The Verity boost would have created a two-tier result set. Paid tier listings above the fold; everyone else below. Searchers would eventually notice. Trust would erode. We would have become the thing we said we were not.
So we did not ship it.
What This Means for Every Listing Today
Every TalkTag listing on Findborg starts at a Verity score of 50. A family-owned restaurant in Brooksville and a national chain both start there. A one-person consultancy and a Fortune 500 company both start there.
Paid TalkTag tiers unlock presentation features: FAQ panels, sitelinks, video embeds, business hours, contact info, maps. They give you more surface area on the page. They do not move your score.
Your Verity score goes up when your listing is genuinely useful — when people click through, engage with your content, leave quality signals in the Hive, and come back. That is the only path to higher visibility on Findborg.
We want that to be on the record. Not as a boast — just as a fact about how this works. The boost is gone. The decision is permanent. And if that changes, we will tell you.
“Is Findborg actually ad-free — do paid business listings get better search rankings than unpaid ones, or does everyone start at the same Verity score?”
