Listing guidelines

TrustList is a trust directory. Buyers use it to compare software and IT-services providers on verified information, so the value of every listing depends on every other listing being honest. These guidelines apply to every company, product and article added or claimed through the Growth Hub, and you'll be asked to confirm you've read them before you can add one.

The rules

1. Only list what you're authorised to represent. Create listings for your own business, your own products, or content you wrote. If a listing already exists, claim it — don't duplicate it.
2. Every claim must be verifiable. No invented ratings, awards, client names, revenue figures or benchmark numbers. If you can't point to where a fact comes from, leave it out.
3. Pick the specific category, not the broadest one. A listing filed under the right vertical gets found; one filed under a catch-all doesn't. Some verticals — such as the site's own pages — are staff-managed and won't appear as options. A listing may carry at most 20 categories: choose the ones that describe what you actually do, and the locations you actually serve. Adding every category and every town does not widen your reach — it dilutes the pages other businesses earned their place on, and we trim listings that do it.
4. Articles must be substantial, original and structured. Articles must be at least 2,000 words, with 1 main heading and at least 4 section headings, before they can be published. Give it a full, descriptive title (at least 20 characters) and a real author name. Write for readers, not search engines: promotional-only copy, keyword-stuffing or content lifted from elsewhere will be unpublished. Drafts are never restricted — the bar applies when you publish.
5. Contact details and links must be real. Working website, real email, accurate location. Redirects, placeholder pages or misleading URLs get the listing removed.
6. A listing must say something before it goes live. A company or product needs a description of at least 120 characters, between 1 and 20 categories, and a working website before it can be published. An entry with a name and nothing else helps no one — it wastes a buyer's click and it will not rank. Save it as a draft for as long as you need; the bar applies when you publish.
7. Listings that close are retired, not deleted. When a business shuts down or a product leaves the market we mark the listing closed. The page stays as a record, is removed from search and rankings, and can be restored if the facts change. Tell us if your listing is wrong — we would rather correct it than retire it.
8. Reviews are independently verified — never fabricated. Don't write your own, don't buy them, don't pressure customers for a rating. TrustList verifies reviews and removes ones that fail.

Article requirements

Articles are the listing type most often abused for search-engine spam, so they carry an explicit minimum before they can be published:

• A full, descriptive title of at least 20 characters — the title is what readers see, not a keyword or a company name — and a real author name on the byline.
• At least 2,000 wordsof actual prose — headings, links, URLs, code and markup don't count towards it.
• At least 1 main heading (a Markdown # heading or an HTML <h1>).
• At least 4 section headings (Markdown ## or HTML <h2>).

Drafts are never restricted — write and save as much or as little as you like. The bar is checked when you publish, and again if you edit the body of an article that is already live. An article that falls short stays saved as a draft, and the Growth Hub tells you exactly what's missing (for example, “1,240 words, minimum 2,000”). The check runs on our servers, not just in the browser, so it applies to every route into the platform.

Staff-managed listing types

A small number of listing types — notably the site's own pages, such as the terms and conditions — are managed by TrustList staff through Content Studio. They don't appear as categories in the Growth Hub, and the server rejects any attempt to file a listing under one directly. If you think your content belongs in one of those types, contact us.

What happens when the rules are broken

• Listings that break these rules are unpublished or removed without notice.
• Repeat violations suspend the account and any listings it owns.
• Staff-managed listing types can't be selected from the Growth Hub, and the server rejects attempts to use them directly.
• An article below the minimum (2,000 words, 1 main heading, 4 section headings, a 20-character title) stays saved as a draft and cannot be published until it meets the bar.
• A company or product below the minimum (120 characters of description, 1 category, a working website) stays saved as a draft too. The same check runs whether you publish from the Growth Hub, the API or an AI agent.
• Listings whose website stops resolving are checked repeatedly before anything happens, then marked closed rather than deleted — the page becomes a record and leaves search and rankings.
• A listing may carry at most 20 categories. Writes above that are refused outright, and listings already stuffed beyond it are trimmed back to the 20 most relevant to what they do.

Where these rules come from

The same guidelines are shown inside the Growth Hub every time a vendor adds a listing, and the same thresholds are what the platform enforces — this page, the acknowledgement step and the server-side checks are generated from one shared definition, so they can't quietly disagree. If you spot a listing that breaks them, tell us. If you want to see what vendors get in return for meeting them, see For Vendors and how TrustList stays independent.