How the Popularity Score works
A 0–100 blend of five measured signals, led by real traffic — missing data is shared out, not counted as zero.
The Popularity figure on a tool page is a score from 0 to 100. Real-world traffic leads it, because it is the one signal we have for almost every tool:
- Traffic (60%) — the tool’s own monthly visits, from external data
- Reviews (15%) — rating, weighted by how many reviews there are
- Demand (10%) — page views and outbound clicks on this site over the last 30 days, once there are enough of them to mean something
- Growth (10%) — recent traffic against the period before it
- Engagement (5%) — how visitors use the tool’s own website
Traffic has to be the tool’s own
A tool that lives on a page of a bigger website — a custom GPT on chatgpt.com, a feature page on a big brand’s site — does not get that website’s traffic. We show no traffic figure rather than someone else’s.
Missing data
If we have no reviews for a tool, that signal’s weight is spread across the others rather than scored as nothing. Traffic is the exception: a tool with no measured traffic can score at most 35 until its traffic is measured, so a listing with no data cannot outrank the tools everyone uses.
A measured zero is different from missing data, and does score low.
It cannot be bought
No plan or placement changes this score. Paid placements affect position in some lists, and are labeled where they do — see What “Sponsored” means.