NoFakeBiz Discovery Principles

What Discover is

Discover is NoFakeBiz home infrastructure for finding public presence in a place — who exists, what they do, and why they matched what you asked. It is not “a better Google,” and it does not replace the open web. External search and AI systems may still read public NoFakeBiz pages; Discover must keep working as our own field of view.

Discover exposes a field of eligible public identities (and, over time, other public findable units), then lets you filter and choose. It does not compress the field into a secretly ranked “winner” for you.

Principles

1. Do not turn the field into winners. Discover first helps you see who is present and what they offer, with inspectable reasons for a match. Filters and sorts assist; they do not replace human judgment with an opaque “best” declaration.
2. Organic inclusion is not for sale. Paying NoFakeBiz does not buy a higher place in organic Discover results, and does not purchase the right to appear as an ordinary field member.
3. Sponsored is never Organic. If a paid placement appears near Discover results, it must be clearly identified as Sponsored. Sponsored placement must not be presented as an organic match, a recommendation of trustworthiness, or a “best business” crown.
4. Verification is not an entrance fee. Holding a scoped confirmation signal (for example email confirmed) is not required merely to appear as an eligible organic result. Confirmation may add scoped provenance — what was checked — not a secret boost that invents winners, and not a universal “verified person” or “verified Digital You” badge.
5. Provenance is not the same as trust, and not the same as ranking. Discover may show where a claim comes from (for example, a self-described public profile). Source information helps you judge; it does not automatically mean “trusted,” and it does not by itself decide order.
6. Why matched must be honest. When a result matches your search, Discover should show why — using real evidence from the public identity, such as its name, category, or description — not a vague “algorithm thinks this is best.”
7. Results are public identities, not private accounts. Discover surfaces public layers people choose to present. Private account data is not the organic “who” in the field.
8. Local first — not worldwide by default. Discover starts from a place scope (in the United States MVP: a county). It does not silently open a worldwide field when location is unknown. If place is not yet chosen, Discover asks for a place before treating results as the field.
9. Widen is never silent. Expanding beyond the starting county (for example, nearby counties) must be an explicit action you can see — not a quiet rewrite of the map behind your back.
10. Empty is not the same as incomplete. “No matches for this query in this place” is different from “this place has thin coverage on NoFakeBiz” or “you have not selected a place yet.” Discover should not imply that nobody exists in the real world merely because the platform’s field is empty or incomplete.
11. First on the screen is not “the best.” Sort order is a labeled way to browse qualifying matches. Position one is not an institutional declaration of the most trustworthy or most deserving business.
12. Discover and Marketplace are different doors. Discover finds public presence that matches a question in a place. Marketplace is for commercial listings and exchange. Sharing related data kinds later does not make them the same product.

What this document is not

• It is not a technical specification, API, or ranking formula.
• It is not a promise that every business, event, or notice in every county is already listed.
• It is not a claim that NoFakeBiz replaces Google, maps, or government directories.
• It does not authorize silent changes to these rules through product marketing copy.

Accountability

These principles are the public commitment behind Discover. Product behaviour that contradicts them is a defect against institutional policy — not a “ranking experiment.”

A plain-language companion, How Discover Works, may explain the same rules with everyday examples. NoFakeBiz maintains internal architecture and implementation requirements to keep the product consistent with these principles.