Top survey recommended panels listing?

[Cliche01]

Mintvine is at the top of the list, though it has a thee star rating which would pretty much make it average.  Univox in second place, though it has a 2 star rating, and Bizrate third place with only four reviews, two one star, and two four star...so how did these get in the recommended position? 

[ksedwar]

Those are the "Recommended" panels.

 

The list starts just below:

1 Darwin's Data

2 Pinecone Research

3 Paidviewpoint

etc...

[Cliche01]

Thanks, I get the difference between the main list and the recommended, just don't see why these are recommended when the ratings are rather lackluster?

[ksedwar]

I don't know for sure but it probably has something to do with this. https://www.surveypolice.com/affiliate-disclosure

[ropar]

https://www.surveypolice.com/affiliate-disclosure

 

So SurveyPolice takes paid advertising from survey companies, meaning the site has its own bias in favor of those companies it links to. I don't know why you're having a problem understanding that. You've been here long enough.

[ksedwar]

No it means that the websites operational costs are not free and advertising is used to offset the out-of-pocket expenses. How is it bias to have advertising targeted at your user base?

 

I understand how the internet works just fine. Almost every website we visit uses some sort of advertising to offset operating costs. I'm actually really impressed and appreciative with how well SurveyPolice and the forums are run. I wouldn't be active here or would I have agreed to be moderator if I thought something shady was taking place.

[ropar]

It's not shady, and as you say, fully disclosed, but it does affect SP's own content, for instance, the one the OP pointed out about "Recommended Sites,"   and various other articles I've read here.

[spider]

Surveypolice is NOT biased towards any particular survey site. Yes, they use advertising to maintain this site, but we all are intelligent enough to do our research on a site before deciding to join it. It's like doing a google search. Whoever pays the most, gets to be the first search result. Doesn't mean that that is the best choice.   

[Administrator]

At the top of the country listings and Pick-a-Perk, you will find some panels highlighted in yellow who are advertisers. These advertisers rotate positions, and there is not an order to them. These panels help keep SurveyPolice free; operating a website of this magnitude has sizable costs, so rather than charging users for access to SurveyPolice, we chose to go with having advertisers instead. As spider pointed out, it is similar to Google's model.

 

Advertisers are not treated differently in terms of reviews, as we are very careful to maintain the integrity of SurveyPolice. Although we mention advertisers in blog posts, etc., whether it's the actual rankings, Pick-a-Perk, the forum, the Survey Tracker tool, and more, you will find them mixed in with content that contains very little advertising (and in some cases no advertising) at all. Again, we don't plaster ads everywhere, mislead our community users into signing up with panels, nor do we charge any fees for accessing (what we feel) is pretty quality information.

 

 

I understand how the internet works just fine. Almost every website we visit uses some sort of advertising to offset operating costs. I'm actually really impressed and appreciative with how well SurveyPolice and the forums are run. I wouldn't be active here or would I have agreed to be moderator if I thought something shady was taking place.

 

Thank you ksedwar! Your appreciation of our work along with the rest of the survey taking community is what keeps us going.