Every TalkTag listing on Findborg starts at a Verity score of 50.
Every one of them. Free tier. Signature tier. Doesn’t matter. The clock starts at 50, and where it goes from there has nothing to do with what you pay.
That is not a marketing line. It is a design decision that required us to undo something we built.
We Built a Verity Boost
Earlier in Findborg’s development, the team built and tested a ranking boost mechanism. The idea was straightforward: businesses on paid tiers would get a lift — a Verity advantage tied to their subscription level.
We turned it on. We watched the results.
Within testing, paid boosts held listings at the top of search result pages with a dominance that was immediately recognizable for what it was: ads with different branding. The listings weren’t earning their positions through real engagement. They were buying them. The only meaningful difference between this and Google Ads was the name on the invoice.
We removed the feature.
Not quietly. Not via a policy footnote buried in a changelog. We made a deliberate decision, documented it, and made sure it was reflected everywhere the integrity promise lives — because the integrity promise is the whole point.
The name Verity means truth. Running a Verity boost would have made that name a lie.
What Verity Actually Measures
Verity is a community trust and ranking system. It moves based on five organic signals:
Community Votes — The most direct signal. Citizens of Findborg can vote any listing up or down. Real endorsement from real people who’ve actually found your business and decided it was worth something.
Engagement — Meaningful interaction with a listing. Time spent. Depth of visit. Not vanity clicks — actual evidence that someone found what they were looking for.
Click-Through Rate — How often people who see your result in search actually choose it. A listing that earns its clicks earns its position.
Impressions — How often your listing surfaces across relevant searches. Relevance over time, not just a single query burst.
Signal Graph Activity — The broader pattern of how a listing moves through the Findborg ecosystem. Not a single metric. A picture of health.
None of these five signals are for sale. Paid tiers unlock how much of your business appears in search results — FAQ panels, video embeds, maps, contact info, trust badges. Richer presentation. More surface area for searchers to engage with. That matters for Verity, because more engagement creates more signal.
But the score itself? The score is the community’s job.
What Paid Tiers Actually Buy
Let’s be clear about what the tiers do:
A Free listing gets you in the game. Your business is findable. Verity starts at 50.
A Pro listing adds FAQ panels, site links, and a CTA button. When searchers find you, they find more of you.
A Business listing adds video, maps, contact info, hours, trust badges, and the on-demand spider — 50 pages crawled in real time, auto-generating TalkTags as it goes.
A Signature listing adds a hero banner, extended FAQs, community testimonials surfaced from Hive activity, and — launching Q2 — a private analytics dashboard showing your impressions, CTR, and Verity score history over time.
Every tier gets you more surface area. None of them move your score.
A free listing with genuine community trust will outrank a Signature listing that nobody clicks. That is not fine print. It is the foundation the platform is built on.
Why This Matters for Your Business
The web is full of platforms where buying more gets you more. That model made sense when the internet was new and reach was the whole game. It makes less sense now, when everyone with a budget is running the same auction and the searcher on the other end has learned to distrust anything that looks paid.
Findborg is built on a different bet: that the businesses worth finding will, over time, be found. That community trust is a real asset. That earned discoverability compounds in ways paid placement never will.
Your TalkTag is how you start building that asset. How fast it grows depends on whether the people who find you think you’re worth it.
We built a shortcut and chose not to sell it.
Findborg is in Public Beta. TalkTags are free to start. Your ranking is yours to earn.
