How List Maro ranks SaaS tools
Human review, community upvotes, and why paid placement never buys rank — the ranking rules behind every List Maro page.
Directories die when ranking becomes a pay-to-win auction. List Maro is built so that does not happen. This page is the plain-language version of the rules already enforced in code and product copy.
1. Nothing auto-publishes
Every listing enters a moderation queue. A person decides whether it goes live, gets rejected, or needs changes. That is slower than scraping the internet, and that is intentional: a human-reviewed catalog is the only catalog worth ranking.
2. Votes move the feed; age keeps it honest
Public feeds use community upvotes with age decay. A product that launched last year cannot sit on raw vote totals forever while better tools ship. The exact gravity is an implementation detail; the product promise is simpler: early submission is not a permanent crown.
3. Paid placement is visibility, not rank
Sponsored slots exist. They are:
- Labelled as promoted / paid where they appear
- Inventory-capped so the rail does not become a wall of ads
- Never sold as dofollow link equity — paid outbound links use
rel="sponsored"
If a ranking table on a category, tag, or blog embed shows a promoted product, the UI says so. Editorial order and paid order are different systems.
4. Outbound link policy is fixed
Editorially approved free listings may earn a normal follow link after review. Paid placements do not. That is not a marketing preference — selling follow links is a link scheme that would devalue the whole domain, including honest listings.
5. Thin pages stay out of the index
Empty category hubs, single-listing tag pages, and empty alternatives pages are kept out of the index until they have enough substance. Programmatic URLs without substance are how directories lose trust with crawlers. We would rather show fewer URLs than pollute the sitemap.
6. Machine readers get the same truth
Markdown renditions (.md), llms.txt, and the public JSON API state whether a placement was paid. Agents summarising “best CRM” should not have to reverse-engineer the UI to see sponsorship.
How to use List Maro
- Start from categories or explore
- Read product pages for tagline, pricing model, and related tools
- Use alternatives and compare pages when editors have linked a pair
- Submit a product if you want to be reviewed for inclusion