How Bastivo ranks providers
A provider first has to be eligible for a listing: it appears on a category, solution, industry or domicile page only when its profile records that relationship and it meets the listing rules. Eligible providers are then ordered by the Bastivo Trust Score, which is calculated only from structured data held on the platform. We publish the factors and the rules around them. We do not publish the weights or any provider's numeric score.
The factors
- Verification
- Counts only while current; expired or revoked verification does not count. A profile can be unclaimed (built from public information), claimed (managed by the provider) or verified (specific evidence checked). Claiming is not verification, and verification is not regulatory approval or a judgment of suitability. It guarantees no position.
- Profile completeness
- Whether the profile has a summary, website and profile address, and records its categories, services, industries and domiciles.
- Reviews
- Published, moderated client reviews only: the average rating, the number of reviews (each additional review adds less) and how recent they are. Providers cannot approve, edit or remove reviews.
- Experience and taxonomy match
- The breadth of categories, services, solutions, industries and domiciles recorded on the profile. Recorded relationships are declarations, not proof of a license in a given place.
- Responsiveness
- Not currently used in the score. Bastivo does not yet measure providers' response history, so this factor carries no weight today.
- Recent activity
- How recently the provider updated its profile content or received a published review. The signal fades as that activity gets older.
What never affects ranking
- Payment or any commercial arrangement. Bastivo offers no paid placement today. Claiming a profile is not itself a ranking factor; it lets the provider keep the profile complete and seek verification, which are. If sponsored placement is ever introduced, it will be labeled and kept apart from organic results.
- Unstructured signals. Every factor traces to a specific stored field, so a result can be explained and audited.
- AI output. The AI layer explains Assessment results in plain language; it never computes or alters a score or a verification decision.
Confidence, sources and corrections
Each calculation records a confidence level that reflects how much recent data supported it. Confidence is kept separate from the score and is never a hidden penalty. Information on Bastivo is labeled by where it comes from — verified facts, user input, assumptions, calculated indicators and AI interpretation — and some questions are marked as needing professional advice. If something on a profile is wrong, the provider can correct it. Rankings are not set by hand: administrators cannot override or adjust a provider's position, and commercial status never affects it. Whether a provider can be listed at all is decided separately, before ranking. Review and listing rules are set out in the review policy and the provider listing policy. Assessment scoring and its limits are explained in the AI Assessment methodology.
Providers can see a plain-language breakdown of their own factors in the provider portal.