How to read the Place Score

The score is the sum of six signals, each with its own ceiling: engagement 30 points, growth 20, reactions 15, reviews 15, consistency 12, trust 8. One hundred in total.

A signal that cannot be measured does not get a zero — it drops out of the sum together with its ceiling. Our example has no reviews, so the points it earned are divided by 85, not 100: five signals out of six. Here are the five.

An average post in the channel gets 195,382 views. Divided by 1,612,296 subscribers that is 12.1% — the share of subscribers who open a post. That is engagement.

It is compared not with the whole catalog but with channels of the same size. For a channel above one million subscribers the reference is 10%: the larger the audience, the smaller the share that reads each post, and asking 40% of a million-subscriber channel would be unfair. The references by size: under a thousand subscribers 60%, under ten thousand 40%, under fifty thousand 28%, under two hundred thousand 20%, under a million 14%, above that 10%.

12.1% against a reference of 10% gives 1.21. The full 30 points require twice the reference, so 1.21 is halved: 0.61, which is 18.2 points.

There is a ceiling too. Engagement above 150%, or above four times the reference, is treated as impossible: nobody gets that many views without buying them, and such a channel gets zero on this signal.

Growth is computed from the daily change in subscribers over the last 30 days; at least seven measurements are required, otherwise the signal is not measured. The example has 25.

A smooth curve gets the full 20. Two things are penalised. First, spikes: a day whose change stands out from the rest by more than three standard deviations. The example has one such day, +1,450 subscribers, and the spike share of 1 in 25 is multiplied by five: minus 20%. Second, decline: if the channel lost subscribers on more than half of the days, the signal is multiplied by 0.6. The example had 12 losing days out of 25 — 48%, short of half.

The result: 20 minus a fifth — 16 points. What honest growth looks like on the chart has its own guide.

Two numbers from the posts: reactions per view and forwards per view. Reactions have a reference of 3% of views and carry 60% of the signal; forwards have a reference of 1% and carry 40%.

The example has reactions at 0.0% of views and forwards at 0.4%. Reactions give zero, forwards give 0.4 of their reference: 0.4 × 0.4 = 0.16, times 15 — 2.4 points. That is what a news channel looks like when people read it and do not discuss it.

The channel published 52 posts in 30 days. The full 12 points go to 20 posts a month — roughly one every day and a half. Fewer, and the signal rises from zero towards twenty; more, and it falls: every 60 posts above twenty cost the whole signal, but it never drops below 0.3.

52 posts is 32 above the mark: 1 − 32 / 60 = 0.47, which is 5.6 points. A news channel pays for this: it cannot post less often, and the score accounts for that honestly rather than punishing it.

Trust is the age of the record with us. A full year of history gives the full point. The earliest post we hold for the example was published on August 15, 2026 — 26 days ago; 26 of 365 is 0.07. Age carries 60% of the signal, and the remaining 40% goes to any record with a filled profile: 0.6 × 0.07 + 0.4 = 0.44, times 8 — 3.5.

The creation date shown in the «Channel in numbers» section does not take part here: it is not known for every channel, and the signal is computed by one rule for all.

18.2 + 16 + 2.4 + 5.6 + 3.5 = 45.7 points out of 85 possible. 45.7 / 85 = 0.54 — score 54.

The grade follows the score: A from 80, B from 65, C from 50, D from 35, F below. 54 is a C.

The rank is computed within the category: how many channels in «News and media» score lower. On September 10 that was 69%, and the page says «higher than 7 out of 10 channels in the category». Preliminary scores do not take part in the comparison.

A score is valid for three days and recomputed every night. For channels with dozens of posts a day the night measurement of views is lower than the daytime one — the freshest post has not collected its views yet — and the score can move several points from one night to the next: a channel with 3.1 million subscribers went from 46 to 38 in a day.

A score is marked preliminary while fewer than 60 points out of 100 are measured or the history is shorter than seven days; on September 10, 2026 the catalog held 2,124 preliminary scores. Why a channel has no score at all is the next guide.