Methodology
How the VFCore Score is calculated
Short answer
Every outlet in the directory carries a score from 0 to 100 and a letter grade. It is a weighted blend of six measurable things — authority, reach, link value, discoverability, how prominent the sponsored label is, and operational quality. The weights are published below, so the ranking can be checked rather than trusted.
The weights
| Component | Weight | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Authority | 30% | Domain rating and domain authority |
| Reach | 25% | Monthly traffic, log-scaled, and global rank |
| Link value | 15% | Dofollow over nofollow over no link, and how many are allowed |
| Discoverability | 10% | Indexed, in Google News, syndication reach |
| Transparency cost | 10% | How prominent the sponsored label is - an unlabelled placement scores higher |
| Operational quality | 10% | Turnaround, acceptance rate, permanence, our own on-time record |
Grades
Three deliberate choices
Traffic is log-scaled. Monthly visits span six orders of magnitude across this catalogue. On a linear scale every outlet below a million visits would look identical, so the score compares them by order of magnitude instead.
A visible sponsored label costs points. Two outlets with the same traffic are not worth the same if one runs your piece as editorial and the other stamps “Sponsored” across the top. That difference is priced into the score rather than left for you to notice later.
We score ourselves too. Operational quality includes our own on-time delivery record for that outlet. An outlet with great metrics that repeatedly runs late loses points, because the number is meant to predict your experience and not just the domain’s.
What it is not
It is not a measure of how good the resulting article will be, and it is not a promise of SEO impact. It ranks the placement opportunity on the attributes we can verify. Where a figure comes from a third-party tool, the source and the date it was last checked are shown on the outlet’s own page — a metric with no date next to it is a metric you should not trust, here or anywhere else.
Overrides
Occasionally the formula is wrong about an outlet we know well. An operator can override a score, and when they do, the formula’s own output stays visible next to the override in our admin so the drift is never invisible to us.