Evidence standards
Sources & source tiers
Transparency is the product. Here is exactly how we rank the evidence behind every vendor profile.
The four tiers#
Authoritative records
Primary records issued by government bodies and courts: FDA warning letters and enforcement actions, FTC enforcement, DOJ press releases and case filings, court opinions and dockets, state attorney general actions, secretary of state business registrations, and state pharmacy board records. When a claim links directly to one of these, confidence is at its highest.
Official & commercial
Official materials published by the vendor itself, accredited third-party laboratory reports and certificates of analysis, and established commercial databases (domain registrars, business data providers). Reliable for what they state, but vendor-published material is treated as a claim about itself, not independent confirmation.
Independent indexes
Independent search tools and aggregators: CourtListener and other docket/court indexes, domain age and registration history services, and archived snapshots of vendor websites. Useful for discovery and corroboration, but one step removed from the primary record.
Community reports
Unverified community discussion: forums, social media posts, and anecdotal reports. These are labeled clearly and never presented as established fact. They can prompt further research, but they cannot by themselves raise confidence.
Tier and source type are independent#
A source's tier (how authoritative it is) and its type (what kind of source it is) are assessed independently. A court-related source can be Tier 3 or Tier 1 depending on what it actually links to:
- Tier 3 + court index — a CourtListener search result showing that a case exists, without the underlying document linked. It proves a record was found, not what the record says.
- Tier 1 + court document — a direct link to the authoritative court opinion, filed complaint, or agency enforcement letter itself.
The rule is conservative: a source is only promoted to Tier 1 when the URL resolves to the authoritative document itself. A search-result page that merely points at an official record stays Tier 3 until the document is linked and verified.
How sources are cited#
Every researched field on a vendor profile links to the sources that support it, with each source's tier shown alongside. You don't have to take our word for anything — the evidence chain is inspectable field by field. See Research methodology for how tiers combine into confidence levels.