Frequently Asked Questions

Peakd is a community-powered ranking platform where products, services, companies, and places get ranked, discussed, and compared. Think Rotten Tomatoes meets Reddit meets Wikipedia — for everything.

Rankings use a weighted system that considers: vote scores, voter trust level, how recent the votes are, and how many people voted. A single 10/10 vote doesn't make something #1 — you need sustained, credible community consensus.

No. Rankings are purely community-driven. Companies can pay to claim their page (verified badge, analytics, official responses) and run promoted placements — but these are clearly labelled and never disguised as rankings.

Early rankings reflect ratings from our founding team and beta testers — real people giving honest opinions. As the community grows, rankings are shaped entirely by community votes. The weighted system means early seeds get naturally diluted as more people contribute. Every ranking you see is based on genuine ratings, never fabricated.

Yes. Browsing, voting, commenting, and submitting entities is completely free. We make money from company profiles and promoted placements.

Most sites use rigid systems — thumbs up/down (YouTube), 5 stars (Amazon), or simple upvotes (Reddit). Peakd uses a precise 1-10 slider on individual aspects, giving you full expression. A 7 and an 8 mean different things. Combined with trust-weighted rankings and per-aspect breakdowns, you get the most honest picture of what's actually good.

Peakd gets smarter as more people contribute — every rating, edit, and vote improves rankings for everyone. Some pages are new or haven't had enough community attention yet. You can help by rating what you know, suggesting edits, or submitting new entries.

No. You can view all rankings, scores, discussions, and comparisons without an account. An account unlocks: voting, commenting, creating lists and polls, the Discover feed, following categories, bookmarking entities, earning badges, and submitting new entries.

Rate entities 1-10 using a slider, overall or on individual aspects (e.g. 'Ease of Use', 'Value for Money'). One vote per entity per user. You can change or remove your vote anytime. Scores are color-coded: red (1-3, poor), yellow (4-6, average), teal (7-8, good), gold (9-10, exceptional).

Your rating history is visible on your public profile — which entities you rated and the scores you gave. However, individual votes are NOT shown on entity pages — visitors to an entity page only see the aggregated community score, never who gave what. This means companies cannot identify or retaliate against individual raters. If you prefer full privacy, enable private profile mode in Settings to hide all your activity.

Points earned by contributing — voting, commenting, submitting entities. They increase your trust score, which gives your votes more weight in the rankings over time.

Your trust score grows as you contribute: voting, commenting, and submitting entities all earn points. The more you contribute, the more weight your votes carry in the rankings. A new user's vote counts less than a long-standing, active contributor's vote — this prevents manipulation.

Your rank (#1, #42, etc.) is your position among all Peakd users, ordered by trust score. The more consistently you contribute quality content, the higher you climb.

Other users can rate you on 5 aspects: Content Quality, Helpfulness, Accuracy, Detail, and Expertise. These ratings appear on your public profile and reflect how the community perceives your contributions.

High community reputation signals that you're a trusted contributor. Users with consistently high reputation ratings and active participation have their votes weighted more heavily in the rankings, rewarding quality contributions.

Each user can only rate another user once per aspect. Ratings are averaged across all raters, so a single malicious rating has minimal impact. Suspicious patterns (mass-downrating) are flagged for review.

The score you see (e.g. 7.4/10) is the real weighted average of all votes. Rankings on leaderboard pages use an additional confidence factor — entities with more votes rank higher than those with fewer votes at the same score. This means a single 10/10 vote shows as 10.0 but won't sit above an entity with hundreds of votes at 8.5. The weighting considers: (1) voter trust score, (2) recency of votes, and (3) total vote volume.

If you represent a company or product listed on Peakd, you can 'claim' their page. This gives you a verified badge, analytics dashboard, ability to respond officially to comments, and page editing rights.

We verify via email — you must have an email address on the company's domain (e.g. [email protected]). We send a verification code to confirm you control that domain. This prevents URL spoofing attacks that DNS/meta tag methods are vulnerable to.

Verification is free. The ongoing management features (analytics dashboard, official responses, verified badge) require a £99/month subscription.

Yes. All embed widgets (rating badge, rank badge, rating card) are live — they update automatically as your score and rank change on Peakd. There's nothing to maintain. Copy the code once and your website always shows your current rating.

Only pages you legitimately represent. Fraudulent claims will result in account suspension.

You create your ad (headline, description, image, destination URL), choose a view pack, and target 1–5 categories. You can also optionally target specific countries — if set, your ad only shows to visitors from those countries (same price, views are just consumed more slowly). Payment is taken upfront via Stripe. After payment, your ad is reviewed by our team (usually within 48 hours). Once approved, it goes live immediately. Your ad appears across 7 page types: category rankings, filtered rankings, location rankings, comparisons, alternatives, annual lists, and use-case pages. Views are deducted once per unique visitor per day — refreshes don't cost extra. If your ad is rejected, you'll be notified with a reason and can edit and resubmit. Refunds are available for rejected ads that cannot be salvaged.

No. Advertising and page claims are completely separate systems. Any registered user can create and run promoted ads — you don't need to represent or claim an entity. Claims give you control over a specific page (verified badge, editing, analytics). Promotions give you visibility via labelled ads in category pages. Many advertisers promote products or services they don't have a page for — and that's perfectly fine.

Yes. When creating your ad, you can optionally select one or more countries. If set, your ad will only be shown to visitors from those countries. This uses anonymous country-level detection via Cloudflare — no personal data is shared with you. If you leave the country field empty, your ad shows globally to all visitors. Pricing is the same regardless of targeting — geo-targeting just means your view credits are consumed only when matching visitors see your ad.

Go to /submit, choose the entity type, and either paste a URL for Quick Import (we'll auto-fill the details from the page) or fill in the form manually. All submissions require a name and at least one category.

Quick Import lets you paste a URL and Peakd will automatically extract the name, description, images, links, and other metadata from that page. It saves time compared to filling everything in manually.

You can submit up to 50 entities per day. Quick Import (URL-based submissions) is limited to 10 per day because each import requires fetching and processing external pages. Manual submissions have a higher daily limit. These limits reset at midnight UTC.

Each URL import fetches the target website, extracts metadata, checks images, and processes structured data — this takes server resources. The 10/day limit prevents abuse while being generous enough for active contributors.

Your entity goes live immediately. If there are quality issues, the community or moderators may flag it for review. Higher trust score users have their submissions prioritised.

Anyone can suggest edits to any entity. If you're the original submitter and the entity has no votes or comments yet, your edits apply immediately. Once the community has engaged (voted or commented), even the original submitter's edits go through the review queue — the entity becomes community property. Edits are approved by: (1) 3+ community upvotes, (2) a moderator, or (3) automatically after 14 days if unreviewed. All edits are recorded in a public revision history with diffs.

Once other users have voted on or commented on your submission, it becomes community-owned content. Your edits still go through, but they require community review first. This prevents anyone — including the original submitter — from silently altering content that others have already evaluated and relied upon.

No. Non-owner edits are proposals that require approval. The original submitter, verified page owner, or community consensus must approve changes. Every edit is tracked with who changed what and when — fully auditable.

If you're the original submitter and the entity has zero votes, you can delete it yourself. Otherwise, submit a removal request — we review these under our removal policy.

Products and organisations are generally not eligible for removal as consumers have a legitimate interest in comparing them. You can claim the page to manage how information is presented, or use our removal request process at /removal.

Use the Report button on any entity or comment. If you're the verified page owner, you can edit the description directly. Factual disputes are resolved by the community + our moderation team.

If your copyrighted content appears on Peakd without permission, send a DMCA notice to our designated agent. See our DMCA policy for the full procedure.

Peakd is a hosting platform for community-generated opinions. Under applicable intermediary liability law — Section 230 (US), E-Commerce Directive Article 14 (EU), and Defamation Act 2013 Section 5 (UK) — we are not legally responsible for content submitted by our users. Rankings represent aggregated community opinion, not editorial statements by Peakd. To date, no user-generated content platform operating under these protections has been successfully held liable for hosting opinion-based rankings.

All ratings on Peakd are opinions. A score of 6/10 means 'the community rates this a 6 on average' — it is not an assertion of fact, quality certification, or editorial judgement. Courts in all major jurisdictions recognise a clear distinction between statements of fact (actionable) and expressions of opinion (protected).

Yes. Rankings constitute aggregated community opinion — protected expression under Article 10 ECHR, the UK Human Rights Act, Section 230 CDA (US), and equivalent free speech protections worldwide. Peakd operates as a neutral intermediary platform.

If you believe content on Peakd violates the law, we encourage you to first use our removal request process at /removal. We respond within 48 hours. If you still wish to pursue legal action, our registered address for service is: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ. Note: courts may impose costs on claimants who pursue legal action that disregards applicable hosting and intermediary protections.

Yes. Overall scores and rankings are visible to everyone — no login required. Peakd is transparent by design: anyone can see how products, services, and entities are rated by the community. This builds trust and helps people make informed decisions without barriers.

Multiple layers: (1) Trust-weighted voting — new accounts' votes carry less weight than established contributors. (2) Rate limiting — prevents automated or rapid-fire voting. (3) One vote per user per entity — no ballot stuffing. (4) Behavioural analysis — suspicious voting patterns (e.g. mass-voting a single entity from new accounts) are flagged and reviewed. (5) Account age weighting — votes from accounts less than 24 hours old carry minimal weight.

Peakd limits how fast you can vote (60 ratings per minute). This prevents bots and scripts from flooding the system. If you're a real person on a rating spree, just wait a few seconds and continue. Your previous votes are safe — nothing is lost.

No. Rankings are computed from community votes only. Companies can pay for: claimed profiles (verified badge, analytics), promoted placements (clearly labelled, separate from rankings), and 'Top Rated' badges (annual license to use their rank in marketing). None of these affect the actual ranking position.

Several safeguards: (1) Email verification required to vote. (2) New account votes carry very low weight. (3) IP-based registration limits (max 3 accounts per IP per day). (4) Trust score must accumulate over time through diverse, genuine activity. (5) Suspicious clusters of votes from related accounts are automatically flagged.

Peakd collects device fingerprints on page views to build a baseline for fraud detection. This data is not yet actively used to block votes, but it allows us to identify suspicious patterns (e.g. multiple accounts voting from the same device). Active vote-level fingerprinting — where suspicious clusters are automatically flagged — is planned for when user volume warrants it. This data is used solely for anti-fraud purposes, never for advertising or tracking.

Every user has a trust score that grows with genuine participation. Your vote's weight in the final ranking is multiplied by your trust score. A brand-new account (trust score 0) has their vote weighted at 0.5x, while a long-standing active contributor (trust score 10) gets 2.0x weight. This means a coordinated attack from 10 new accounts has less impact than 2 genuine users. Trust score increases by: voting across many entities (not just one), writing reviews, having your edits approved, and receiving community reputation ratings. Votes also decay over time — recent votes carry more weight than old ones.

Rankings reflect what the community has voted. If an entity seems incorrectly ranked, the most effective action is to vote yourself — contribute your genuine opinion. If you suspect manipulation (e.g. a brand clearly buying votes), use the Report button on the entity page. We investigate all manipulation reports.

Use our contact form at /contact for general enquiries. For removal requests, use the removal form. For DMCA notices, see our DMCA policy.

For security vulnerabilities, email [email protected]. For general bugs, use our contact form at /contact. We appreciate responsible disclosure.

Visit the /promote page to create self-serve promoted placements. For custom partnerships, use the contact form at /contact.