Advertising disclosure
What we sell, what we do not sell, and how you can tell the difference on any page.
Last reviewed 2026-07-25
What is running today
No advertising is running on Placer Match. There are no sponsored placements, no display ads and no paid results anywhere on this site right now. No payments are being collected at all — payment processing is not connected.
This page states the rules in advance, so that when sponsorship does launch there is a published standard to hold us to.
How sponsorships will be labelled
- Anything paid carries a visible “Sponsored” label.
- The label is text, not a colour or an icon — it is readable by screen readers and does not rely on you noticing a shade of background.
- The label sits on the placement itself, not in a footnote.
- Sponsored placements appear in a separate block, not mixed into organic results.
Paid status is not verification
Verification and commercial membership are two separate systems with separate labels. Buying anything from Placer Match never produces a verification badge, and never changes what a verification badge says.
The Founding Member badge is a commercial membership designation. It does not indicate that a business has been verified, endorsed, quality-checked or recommended, and it does not indicate a better outcome for you.
Paid status does not affect organic ranking
The best-match formula has no paid input. Every factor it uses is published on the rankings page. A sponsored business appears in the sponsored block and in organic results at whatever position its actual relevance earns — never promoted, never demoted.
A paid placement will never be described as a “best match” on the basis of payment.
Commercial relationships we may have
Being straightforward about how this business could make money:
- Paid business memberships, such as Founding Member.
- Packages giving businesses access to submitted project opportunities.
- Sponsored placement in clearly labelled positions.
- Sponsorship of a local guide or category page, labelled on that page.
If we ever add affiliate links or referral commissions, that will be disclosed here and labelled at the point of the link before it goes live.
What we will not sell
- A verification badge, or a change to what one says.
- A higher organic ranking.
- Removal or suppression of a review, or a rating adjustment.
- Removal of a competitor from results.
- Editorial conclusions in a local guide.
- Your personal information. We do not sell visitor data.
What we report to advertisers
A business paying for placement can see how its own listing performed: how often it was shown in results, how often its profile was opened, and how often someone clicked through to its website or phone number.
Those totals are counted from our own pages only. An impression is recorded when the listing actually appears on screen, not merely when a page is built — a listing far down a long results page is not counted as seen unless it was. Traffic we can identify as automated, and our own administrator and testing activity, are excluded from these numbers. Inflating an advertiser’s impression count would be charging for something that did not happen.
Advertisers receive totals for their own listing. They never receive anything about an individual visitor, and never see what anyone searched for. See our privacy policy for what is and is not recorded.
Holding us to this
If you see a placement you think is paid and not labelled, or a claim on this site that contradicts this page, tell us. That is a defect and we will treat it as one.