Measurement methodology

Nothing on TOOLWARS is called verified unless it passed the pipeline below. This page is published before that word appears anywhere on the site.

Clicks. Every outbound link goes through a server-side redirect. We log a salted IP hash, user agent, referer and timestamp — never a raw IP.
Filtering. Known bot/crawler user agents are excluded. Repeat clicks from the same (IP hash, tool) within 24 hours count once. We store raw and filtered counts and always display the filtered number; the raw number is shown on every tool page for transparency.
CTR = filtered clicks ÷ impressions of the tool's board rows. Effective CPC = season spend ÷ filtered clicks.
Integrity. Nobody is ever paid for clicks. If a buyer's filtered/raw ratio drops below 0.6 their stats are quarantined and reviewed before anything is published. Promotional credits are always labeled.
Delivery log. Every paid placement writes a timestamped delivery record (start, end, clicks) — the artifact behind the delivery guarantee.
Settlement. The payment provider's webhook is authoritative; a bid exists on a board only once payment is captured. Handlers are idempotent per payment intent. Ties break by capture timestamp, then lowest intent id.

Season boards rank by one parameter only: the cumulative amount of captured bids for the current season. Higher total → higher rank. No editorial input, no relevance scoring, no other signal. These rankings are paid advertising placements and every board says so.
Global Throne goes to the highest captured bid when the slot's auction closes (bids in the final 5 minutes extend the auction by 5 minutes).
People's Rank is ordered by community votes only. It cannot be bought and paid spend has no effect on it.
Secondary rankings (Best CTR, Best CPC, Most Clicked, Longest #1, Trending) derive from the measured delivery data defined above. They are not purchasable.

Payments are processed by Stripe. No cash rewards for visitors exist anywhere on the product: rankings pay out in status only.