How sponsored placements work.

Three things, and only these:

• A place in Similar brands. A small box on a brand’s listing page that shows up to three other brands in the same category.
• A place in “Also in this category”. A boxed section on a category page, placed under the ranking.
• A premium listing. Extra features on a claimed brand’s own listing page, such as more screenshots and a button of its own.

Every paid placement sits in its own box and carries the word Sponsored. A premium listing is marked as premium. Nothing paid is ever styled to look like part of a ranking.

• A place in a ranking, for a brand that AI models did not recommend.
• A higher place, or a lower one for someone else.
• The removal of another brand.
• An award or a badge. Those are earned from the same AI answers as the ranking.
• A change to a score, or to anything an AI model said.

Claiming a listing is free and changes none of these either. How the rankings are built →

• Inside a ranking, between two ranked brands, or above a ranking.
• In the published record of an edition, or in its downloadable data.
• In the data that search engines and AI models read as the ranking.

CiteHawk subscribers on a plan that includes placements, and brands that buy one on its own. A brand chooses its category, and we check that it is a real product in that category before it is shown.

At most nine brands share one category’s section, and three are shown at a time, in equal rotation. Paying more does not buy a larger share. A brand that is already in the Top 10 shown on the page is not repeated in the box.

It was published before the first sponsored placement was shown, so the rules were on record before any money changed hands.

If a placement is not marked, or looks like part of a ranking, tell us at support@citehawk.com and we will fix it.