Eleven marks, four different kinds of thing
A gambling landing page in this sample carries eleven marks. Only three of them are put there by an issuer that examined the site. Two were bought, five are logos that certify nothing about the operator, and one is an award. Sorting them is the whole exercise.
- Marks on the page
- 11
- Whose issuer examines
- 3
- Bought
- 2
- Not marks at all
- 5
The four kinds
The distinction is not about how official a mark looks. It is about who put it there and what they did before doing so. A logo can be perfectly genuine and still carry no information about the company displaying it, and a seal can be perfectly genuine and still carry very little.
Examined marks - 3 of 11
An issuer with staff examined the operator, or a sample of its product, against a written scheme, and the right to display the mark depends on that examination being renewed. These are the only marks that carry information about the operator.
Bought marks - 2 of 11
A membership, a listing, a directory entry or a paid display placement. Some bought marks are honest about being memberships; the fee is what buys the display, and no examination stands behind the badge.
Logos that are not marks - 5 of 11
Four payment-method logos and a helpline logo. The payment logos say which methods the operator accepts; the helpline logo says the operator displays a helpline. None of them says anything about whether the operator is well run.
Awards - 1 of 11
An award is an editorial or commercial decision by a publisher, decided by a vote, a judging panel or a category table, on a calendar. It says what somebody thought in a particular year, and it is usually held for a year at a time.
The eleven marks, one at a time
The table below is the sample page, sorted. Nothing here describes a real company: each row is a kind of mark, and the arithmetic is the sort of mark-up a reader would find. The point of the last column is the one that decides whether a mark is worth anything: what is there to check it against.
The eleven marks on sample page 1kind count issuer examines? checkable against something published?
examined 3 yes yes, 2 of 3 have a public register
bought 2 no the receipt, and nothing else
not marks 5 4 payment a list of accepted payment methods
1 helpline the helpline's own existence
award 1 it is decided a shortlist, published once a year
totals 11 3 of 11 examined the rest cannot be checked at all
Two of the three examined marks have a public register behind them, which is what makes them checkable by a reader in a few minutes. The third requires an email to the issuer, and the reply time is not published. That difference - register or correspondence - is the practical line between a mark a reader can verify and a mark a reader has to take on trust.
The same page, sorted by what it asks of the reader
Marks that cost nothing to check
A seal with a public register and a certificate number can be looked up in a couple of minutes. A rating can be opened and read - including its distribution, which is the part that carries the information. These are the marks that repay attention, and they are two or three of the eleven.
Marks that cost a letter
A membership badge, a directory listing and most awards have no lookup at all: the only way to check one is to ask the issuer, and the issuer has no obligation to answer a reader about a customer. Those marks are, in practice, unfalsifiable - which is exactly why they crowd the page.
What the count tells you
An operator displaying eleven marks is not eleven times better run than one displaying three. A page accumulates marks because marks are cheap to display and cheap to obtain, while the examination behind the cheapest kind is nothing and the examination behind the most expensive kind is a fraction of one process. The count is a measure of the marketing budget, not of the company.