Overview
The audit measures one thing: is this review site’s top pick the result of an editorial process, or is it the result of money changing hands? Every criterion in the rubric exists to discriminate between those two possibilities. We do not measure technical SEO. We do not measure traffic. We do not measure design quality. We measure whether the site does the work a patient would assume a review site does on their behalf.
The rubric assigns one hundred points across six criteria. Each criterion is broken into sub-checks with explicit scoring anchors so that scoring is reproducible and not a matter of taste. Inter-rater agreement (Cohen’s kappa) was measured on the full criterion-by-site matrix.
Weighting
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| 1. Payment & affiliate disclosure | 25 |
| 2. Provider-selection methodology | 20 |
| 3. Author E-E-A-T | 20 |
| 4. Provider verification rigor | 15 |
| 5. Pricing transparency | 10 |
| 6. Update cadence & corrections | 10 |
| Total possible | 100 |
Payment & affiliate disclosure is the heaviest single criterion at 25%. The justification is empirical: in this category, sites that take undisclosed money from providers tend also to fail every other criterion (no published methodology, no named MD, no verification, no corrections). The single best predictor of a site being a paid placement is whether it acknowledges being one. Weighting disclosure at the top of the rubric encodes that observation.
Criterion 1 · Payment & affiliate disclosure 25 points
Scores whether commercial relationships with audited entities are disclosed where the audited entities are recommended — not on a buried legal page. Five sub-checks, five points each.
- Affiliate disclosure exists (5 pts): The site states somewhere visible that it may earn revenue from providers featured on the site.
- Entity-level mapping (5 pts): The disclosure identifies which specific top-ranked entities are commercial partners. Generic “we may earn a commission” without entity-level mapping scores half credit.
- Inline on ranking pages (5 pts): The disclosure appears on the same page as the ranking it covers, not in a separate legal or footer page.
- Paid vs editorial distinction (5 pts): The site distinguishes paid placements from unpaid editorial picks. A site that does not make this distinction at all scores zero on this sub-check.
- Press-release content labeled (5 pts): Content originating from press-release distribution or sponsored-content services is labeled as such, not presented as in-house editorial.
Criterion 2 · Provider-selection methodology 20 points
Scores whether the site’s “best of” ranking is reproducible. Four sub-checks, five points each.
- Published rubric (5 pts): The criteria the site uses to choose “best” are stated on a dedicated, linkable page.
- Numerical weighting (5 pts): The relative importance of each criterion is numerically specified, not implied or asserted as a narrative.
- Selection inputs stated (5 pts): The actual provider attributes the site weighs are enumerated — pharmacy classification, physician licensure, pricing structure, clinical-staff composition, refund policy, etc.
- Reproducibility (5 pts): A third party with access to the audited providers could re-derive the published ranking from the published methodology without insider information.
Criterion 3 · Author E-E-A-T 20 points
Scores whether the editorial work product is attributable to identifiable, credentialed medical professionals. Four sub-checks, five points each.
- Named MD/DO author (5 pts): A licensed physician is named on the byline for clinical claims. Not “the medical team.” Not a PharmD or RN substituting for a physician on clinical decisions. Not an “Editor’s Choice” from a site that has no named editor.
- Verifiable credentials (5 pts): Education, residency, board certifications, NPI, and state license are stated and externally verifiable against the relevant medical board.
- Editor distinct from authors (5 pts): The publication has an editor whose role is editorial oversight, not authorship, and that editor is named.
- Byline links to bio (5 pts): The author’s name on the article links to a dedicated bio page with credentials, conflicts disclosures, and a list of articles authored.
Criterion 4 · Provider verification rigor 15 points
Scores whether the site does the work a patient would assume a review site does — checking the underlying provider’s claims rather than repeating them. Three sub-checks, five points each.
- Pharmacy verification (5 pts): Each recommended provider’s compounding pharmacy is identified by name, classified as 503A or 503B, and verified against the relevant state board of pharmacy registry. Providers sourcing from unverifiable pharmacies are flagged or excluded.
- Licensure verification (5 pts): Each recommended provider’s named prescribing physicians are checked against state medical board records for active licensure in every state the provider claims to cover.
- Clinical-staff verification (5 pts): The provider’s claims about clinical-staff composition (MD ratios, board certifications, NP/PA supervision arrangements) are independently checked, not repeated from marketing copy.
Criterion 5 · Pricing transparency 10 points
Scores whether the prices the site lists are the prices the patient will actually pay. Two sub-checks, five points each.
- Pricing structure verified (5 pts): The site has independently checked that the prices listed match the prices in the provider’s real checkout flow. Provider-marketing prices are not accepted as audit prices.
- Dose-structure distinguished (5 pts): The site distinguishes dose-independent flat-rate pricing from dose-dependent and subscription-tiered pricing, and explains which structure applies to which recommended provider.
Criterion 6 · Update cadence & corrections 10 points
Scores whether the publication treats its content as something it stands behind over time. Two sub-checks, five points each.
- Per-page last-reviewed date (5 pts): Each ranking and review page carries a verifiable last-reviewed-and-fact-checked date, not a site-wide footer date that updates on every cache flush.
- Public corrections log (5 pts): A linkable, public page lists corrections made to the site’s claims over time, with date, original claim, corrected claim, and the criterion under which the correction was issued.
Inter-rater reliability
Each of the fifteen audited sites was scored independently by Dr. Alex M. and Dr. Thrush. A discrepancy threshold of four points on any single criterion triggered adjudication by Dr. Vartanian, the editor, who reviewed both reviewers’ rationales and issued a binding final score with a written rationale appended to the site’s individual review page.
Cohen’s kappa, calculated on the full ninety-criterion-by-fifteen-site matrix, was 0.82 — a level conventionally interpreted as “almost perfect agreement.” Adjudication was triggered on eleven of ninety criterion-cells, or 12.2% of the matrix.
What this rubric does not measure
It is important to state what the audit is not. We do not score whether a comparison site’s top pick is the “correct” top pick. We measure whether the site’s editorial process is one a reasonable patient could trust to produce a trustworthy recommendation. Two high-quality sites could in principle arrive at different top picks. That would be a healthy state of the editorial market. The pathological state is the one we observe in Tier D: low-quality sites converging on the same top pick because they are not independent.
We also do not score technical SEO, GEO/AEO discoverability, schema implementation, llms.txt presence, or any other purely technical signal. Those are real concerns for publishers but they are invisible to the patient. The patient cares whether the recommendation is honest, not whether it is well-marked-up.
Versioning
This is version 1.0 of the methodology, released May 21, 2026. Material changes to the rubric will be versioned. Previous versions will remain accessible at the appropriate version-suffixed URL. Audits will be re-run against the most recent published version on a quarterly cadence, with the next audit scheduled for August 2026.