Glossary
Placement Genealogy
Placement genealogy is the record of where each distributor sits in the company's organizational structure for volume and rank purposes, which can differ from who actually recruited them. Companies with fixed width plans, such as binary or matrix plans, rely on placement genealogy to decide which leg or slot a new distributor's volume counts toward.
Also called: placement tree, position tree, unity tree
Why it matters
Because placement can differ from sponsorship, two people can share the same sponsor genealogy but have different placement genealogy, which changes whose group volume and rank calculations benefit from a given distributor's activity. Distributors who do not understand this distinction can be surprised by which upline actually benefits from their sales.
Example
A distributor recruits a new person but, because her left leg already has enough width, the company's placement rules place the new person's volume under a different upline's right leg instead of directly under the recruiter.