Outhouse › Ad Load › Marketplace

Self-preferencing

A platform placing its own products ahead of the sellers it hosts.

Why it matters

A platform sees what sells, at what price, to whom, and when. A seller sees their own sales. Building the platform's own version of a best-selling product, then giving it the best position on the shelf, is simply using what one has learned.

Own-brand items carry a reassuring badge in the platform's colours. Sellers are welcome to compete with them, under the same conditions, minus the badge.

How Outhouse measures it

Outhouse counts the site's own brand appearing as a product brand or badge on its own pages: <brand> Basics, <brand>'s Choice, by <brand>, Our brands, Exclusive to <brand> and similar. Three or more scores in full.

This audit counts towards Ad Load, with a weight of 3. A category is 75% its two highest-scoring audits and 25% all of its audits, weighted, so a site is judged mostly on what it does most and partly on how many things it does.

How to improve your score

Install Promote. Available on selected plans. See all products.

Related audits

• Pay-to-rank: Results whose position depends on what the seller pays the platform.
• Best-price guarantees: Promises that the price is the lowest anywhere, which only a rule on the seller can keep.