How we rank products

Overview

When you browse product listing pages on Liners, the default order is designed to balance discovery with relevance. We do not want the same products to occupy the top positions forever, and we do not want paid promotion to decide organic ranking.

Default Browse Ranking: Daily Shuffle

On broad browse surfaces that use the default catalog sort, products are shown in a randomized order that changes every day. This gives more products a chance to be discovered, rather than the same listings always sitting at the top.

The daily shuffle uses stable signals so the page does not change on every refresh:

• Verified products receive a discovery advantage because the listing information has stronger trust signals.
• The order changes over time so different products can be seen.
• The same page remains stable enough that users are not disoriented while browsing.

This is not used on every listing page. Some pages intentionally use a different default because their purpose is different.

User-Controlled Sorting

Where sort controls are available, users can override the default ordering. Available sort options can include:

• Latest: sorted by publication date, newest first.
• Name A–Z: alphabetical.
• Name Z–A: reverse alphabetical.
• Authority, Top Rated, or Most Reviewed where that surface supports those fields.

When a user selects a custom sort, it replaces that page's default order.

Scoped Category, Tag, and Country Pages

Category pages, tag pages, and country pages do not use the daily shuffle by default. They are scoped pages, so the default order is Latest: newest published products first.

Examples:

• Fintech category
• Mobile Money tag
• Nigeria country page

These pages still let users narrow by supported filters, but the default intent is to show the freshest products within that scope.

Alternatives Pages

Alternatives pages use their own ordering.

• The /alternatives hub shows products that have alternatives and defaults to stronger authority signals, not random shuffle.
• A product-specific alternatives page, such as /paystack/alternatives, is ordered by the precomputed alternatives match score for that source product.

That means alternatives pages prioritize relevance to the alternatives task, not broad catalog discovery.

Search Results

Search pages also use different ordering depending on whether a query is present:

• No query on /search: products are ordered by authority signals so the page can act as a strong search starting point.
• Hybrid search (keyword + vector): results are ranked by relevance, exact name matches first, then semantic similarity, then keyword hits.
• Keyword-only search (when vector search is unavailable or quota is exceeded): results use the selected or default listing order for that request.

Paid Placement

Advertising does not buy organic ranking. Ads and sponsored placements are separate surfaces from the default product listing order.

Summary

Product ordering depends on the purpose of the page. Broad browse pages can use daily shuffle for fair discovery. Category, tag, and country pages default to latest products. Alternatives pages prioritize match relevance. Search prioritizes query relevance when a user is actively searching. Paid ads remain separate from organic ranking.