Research Methodology
How Plondo Researches Its Company Directory
This page documents how Plondo builds its company directory, computes the Plondo Score for each listed company, sources the facts behind every profile, and publishes and corrects that research. It sets out what data Plondo tracks, how it ranks evidence, how it handles facts it has not confirmed, and what the Plondo Score does and does not measure, so any number on plondo.com can be checked instead of trusted blindly.
What the company directory tracks
Plondo's company directory lists direct selling and home based business companies, one record per company.
A company record can carry a name, a logo, an official website link, a founding year, a headquarters country and address, a category, a compensation plan type, a short overview, the key markets a company serves, social profile links, and links to any digital products the company owns, such as an app or proprietary software.
Every record also carries a list of cited sources and a last verified date, so a reader can trace a fact back to where Plondo found it.
Plondo reviews and updates these records over time. A field a reader does not see was not confirmed at the time of writing, not hidden.
See the full company directoryHow Plondo sources and ranks evidence
Plondo ranks the sources behind its facts so a reader can judge how solid a claim is.
The table below sets out Plondo's current source hierarchy. Plondo has not published a fourth tier beyond these three; this page states the hierarchy as it actually stands today, not a larger one.
| Tier | What counts | How Plondo uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Company filings, government data, court records, and on record statements from a named source. | The preferred source for any factual claim. |
| Tier 2 | Established trade press, analyst reports, and peer reviewed research. | Used to support or add context to a Tier 1 source. |
| Tier 3 | Other websites, forum posts, social media, and unverified claims. | Never used alone. Verified against a stronger source, or marked as unverified. |
How Plondo handles missing or unknown data
When Plondo has not confirmed a fact about a company, the directory shows that field as unknown or leaves it blank. Plondo does not guess a number or a detail to fill a gap.
This applies to every field in a company record, including revenue, founding year, workforce size, and headquarters details. An unknown field is a statement that Plondo has not yet confirmed that fact, not a statement that the fact does not exist.
What the Plondo Score measures, and what it does not
The Plondo Score is a score from 0 to 100 that Plondo computes for each company in its directory. It measures how thoroughly a company's public profile is documented, how many markets it reaches, how visible its digital presence is, and where it stands in Plondo's own editorial ranking.
The Plondo Score does not measure income, earnings, or revenue, and Plondo does not treat it as evidence of any of those. It is not a claim about legitimacy, safety, or risk, and it is not a recommendation to join, buy from, or avoid any company.
Plondo computes the score directly from a company's own public fields, so anyone can recompute it from the same inputs. The table below lists each component and its point range.
| Component | What it measures | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Profile depth | How completely the public profile is documented: an overview of at least 120 characters (8 points), a headquarters address (5 points), a founding year (4 points), an ownership disclosure (4 points), a workforce size (4 points), a phone number or contact link (3 points), a letter grade (3 points), and a logo (3 points). | 0 to 34 |
| Global reach | The number of key markets a company serves, at 4 points per market. | 0 to 22 |
| Digital presence | Maintained public channels: 3.2 points for each social profile plus 5 points for each owned digital product or platform, such as an app or proprietary software. | 0 to 22 |
| Editorial standing | Plondo's own curated directory rank, if the company has one. | 0 to 22 |
Within editorial standing, Plondo grants 22 points to a company ranked in the top 3, 18 points to a company ranked 4 to 10, 14 points to a company ranked 11 to 25, 10 points to a company ranked 26 to 50, 6 points to a company ranked 51 to 100, and 4 points to any other ranked company. A company with no editorial rank gets 0 points for this component.
These four components add up to the total score, capped at 100. No income, earnings, or revenue field feeds into this calculation at any step.
Versioning and corrections
Plondo updates company records and the Plondo Score whenever it verifies a new fact or a company's public profile changes. A material change gets a new last verified date on that company's record.
If you find an error in a company record or in how this page describes Plondo's methodology, report it on Plondo's corrections page. Plondo checks every report against the source record and fixes a confirmed error as soon as possible.
Report a correctionOpens the Plondo corrections page.
Limitations and reproducibility
The Plondo Score depends on the fields Plondo has confirmed at the time of scoring. A company with a thin public profile can score low even if the company itself is large, and a detail a company has not disclosed will keep that company's profile depth score lower until the detail is confirmed.
Because the score is a direct calculation from a company's stored fields, not a hidden model, anyone can recompute it from the fields shown on that company's own directory page.
Inclusion in Plondo's directory, and any score a company receives, does not imply Plondo's endorsement of that company. It does not indicate income potential. It does not confirm legality in any jurisdiction. It does not create a customer relationship between Plondo and that company or its representatives.