Four questions, six minutes, no cooperation needed

The four questions on this desk are answerable without contacting the operator, and in this sample two of the three examined marks need only a register lookup. The whole sequence takes about six minutes and ends in one of three answers: checked, uncheckable, or a finding.

Open the partner account Run the four questions

Mark stub

Question 1: who is the issuer
Question 2: what did it examine
Question 3: whose entity is named
Question 4: what is the recourse

the issuerThe company or body that put the mark there - a testing house, an association, a review platform or a media brand

the scopeWhat the examination covered: a process, a system, a game type, one entity or one market

the recourseWhat the issuer does when the operator fails - the question almost no mark answers

Direct answerName the issuer, find the scope on the certificate, match the entity to the one on your terms, and ask what the issuer does when the operator fails. Two lookups and one comparison, about six minutes, and the answer is either that the mark is checkable, that it is uncheckable, or that it was checked and found wanting.

The checklist

The order is deliberate: each question is cheaper than the next, and the cheap ones eliminate most marks on the page before any time is spent.

Name the issuer. Who put this here - a testing house, an association, a review platform or a media brand? If the badge itself does not name an issuer, stop: nothing can be checked about an anonymous mark.
Find the scope. Look for the certificate, the number, the date and the sentence that says what was examined. A scope that names a process, an entity and a period is checkable; a scope of “the operator” is not a scope at all.
Match the entity. Compare the company on the certificate with the company on your terms page. A mismatch does not make the mark false, but it does make it about a different party, and that is the whole of what the mark tells you.
Ask the recourse question. What happens to this mark when the operator fails? If the honest answer is that the badge stays on the page, then the mark is a display and not a check, whatever the examination behind it did.

What the six minutes cost, and what they buy

Sample 6 - the time available against the marks on the pagemarks on one page, sample 1                            11
marks whose issuer examines                            3
    of those, checkable in a public register           2
    of those, needing a question to the issuer         1
minutes per register lookup                             2     4 min
minutes to compare entities                             1     2 min
total for the examined marks                          6 min
for the other eight marks                     not checkable at all

across the desk's book, 40 sites x 6.4 marks = 256 marks
    independently checkable                     84 = 32.8%
    bought                                      56 = 21.9%
    not marks at all                            88 = 34.4%
    awards                                      28 = 10.9%
    checkable that publish a register     31 / 84 = 36.9%

One third, at best. Across the sample book, a third of marks can be checked against something the issuer publishes, and of those only thirty-seven per cent publish a register. The rest have to be taken on trust or left alone - and leaving them alone is a legitimate outcome, not a failure to do the reading.

Three possible endings

Checked

The issuer is named, the scope is published, the register confirms a current certificate for the entity on your terms, and the issuer says what it does when a mark is withdrawn. This is the outcome the examined marks are designed to produce, and it is rarer than the number of badges suggests.

Uncheckable

The issuer is a membership, a listing or an award; there is no certificate, no register and no finding. The mark is not false and it is not evidence. Recording it as uncheckable and moving on is the correct result, and it applies to the majority of marks on a page.

A finding

The register shows an expired certificate, a suspension or an entity that is not the one serving you. That is information about risk, produced by the only party that examined the operator, and it is more useful than anything the other ten badges carry.