Ranking based on quality. Never on payment.
Most wedding directories let the biggest budget rank first. Wedding.one doesn't. Search order is driven by profile quality, completeness, and recent activity — not by who paid for placement.
- No paid placements
- No preferred partners
- Same rules for every vendor
The vendor with the best profile wins — not the biggest budget
A complete, well-presented vendor with clear pricing and recent activity ranks above an incomplete profile that paid more. That is the entire principle of FairRank.
A static quality score, plus a small recency boost in real time
Each vendor's stored FairRank score reflects pure profile quality — completeness, trust signals, and details. On top of that, recent activity adds a small real-time boost when results are shown. Future updates will add a responsiveness signal once we ship in-platform replies.
Profile quality (static)
The bulk of the score. Completeness of your gallery, About text, pricing, location, contact details, capacity, and category-specific attributes — measured and stored. Stable until you update your profile.
Trust signals (static)
A bonus for verified businesses and claimed listings. Helps couples distinguish real, accountable vendors from auto-imported placeholders.
Recency (real-time)
A small boost that decays as time passes since the last meaningful update — applied at search time, not stored. Old vendors aren't permanently penalized; recent edits get a temporary lift.
Eight categories — every one of them in your control
There is no hidden 'editor's choice' or behind-the-scenes weight. These are the only things we score, in plain language. The exact point values aren't published (so vendors can't game thresholds), but the categories and direction are public.
Photos and gallery
A real gallery of your work — depth and variety matter more than a single hero shot.
About text
Substantive copy that tells couples who you are. Templated placeholder text is not enough.
Pricing transparency
Indicative prices or ranges, even partial. Couples self-qualify before reaching you.
Location precision
"A specific, geocoded address. \"Anywhere in Germany\" without coordinates ranks below a precise location."
Contact information
Phone, website, and at least one social profile. Couples want to verify you exist.
Capacity (where applicable)
Guest count limits for venues and caterers. Helps filtered search match couples to the right size.
Category attributes
Category-specific fields filled in (cuisine for caterers, music genres for DJs, services for florists, and so on).
Verification & claim
Verified business status and a claimed listing add a fixed bonus. Both are free.
The four rules we won't break
Trust is the baseline, not a feature. These are commitments — not aspirations.
We don't accept payment for higher rank
No "premium placement", no "featured" boost, no pay-to-win. Ever. Even a vendor on a future paid plan ranks by FairRank, just like everyone else.
We don't hand-pick "preferred partners"
No editorial overrides, no behind-the-scenes promotion of vendors we know personally, no internal partnerships that affect ranking.
We don't penalize you forever for being old
Time decay applies as a small real-time boost, not a permanent stored penalty. Update your profile and the boost comes back.
We don't hide the rules
You're reading them right now. The only thing we don't publish are the exact point values per signal — and only to keep vendors from gaming thresholds instead of doing real work.
Honest answers
The questions vendors and couples actually ask about ranking.
- Because vendors would optimize against thresholds rather than actually improving their profile. "5 photos = X points, 4 photos = Y points" leads to spam galleries. Categories and directions are enough for vendors to know what to do; the rest is gaming-resistance.
- A linear decay over roughly the last quarter of vendor activity. The exact decay window is internal, but the principle is: a vendor who edited their listing this week gets a small lift over an identical listing untouched for three months. The boost is applied at search time, not stored.
- No. Paid plans (when they exist) will unlock features like richer galleries, deeper analytics, or higher SmartReply AI quotas — never search ranking. The same FairRank score determines order regardless of plan.
- Three common reasons: (1) competing vendors in the same area also have great profiles; (2) some category-specific signals are missing (capacity, cuisine list, music genres, etc.); (3) it has been months since your last update. Open your dashboard — the FairRank panel lists the largest improvement opportunities specific to your listing.
- There's nothing to dispute — the score is deterministic from your profile and visible to you. If you believe a signal is being scored incorrectly, contact support and we'll look at the specific field.
- Not yet. We're shipping in-platform messaging soon; once it's live, your reply latency becomes a small real-time boost on top of FairRank — same mechanism as recency. Profile-only ranking applies until then.
Why don't you publish the exact point values?
How is recency calculated?
Will paying customers ever rank higher?
I have a great profile but I rank low — why?
Can I dispute my rank?
What about responsiveness — does answering quickly help?
A platform built around fairness
Better profiles get found first. Couples find vendors who actually fit. Vendors compete on merit. That's the entire pitch — and it's the reason Wedding.one exists.