Method
How WatchRanker orders its lists
Two kinds of list, two kinds of order. Every fact behind either comes from a record we can point to, with the date we read it.
Watch houses: the order of the record
The registers of watch houses (Swiss, Japanese, German, American, and every house A to Z) are not scored. A country register stands in the order of the year each house was founded, oldest first, then by name; the A to Z stands by name. A house's founding year, country, headquarters and owner come from Wikidata, the open record (CC0), and each house's page links that record.
A house whose record turns out to be the same house as another moves to that house's page; a record that turns out not to be a watch house at all (a clock workshop, a movement maker) leaves the registers.
Workout apps: the wrist score
The apps are ranked by WatchRanker's wrist score, read from each maker's own pages and store listings:
- whether the app works with a watch, and which watch families its maker names (Apple Watch, Wear OS, Garmin, Fitbit and others) — this counts most;
- a free plan the maker's own price list shows, or else a free trial;
- whether the maker publishes its prices;
- whether it runs on both iPhone and Android;
- how fully the maker documents what the app does;
- how recently we read the maker's pages.
Two apps with the same score keep the research's own order, then go by name. The score is worked out again every morning.
What a maker can buy
WatchRanker is paid for in part by the makers it lists. A maker can buy a listing, one of the numbered places #1 to #5 on a list, a place beside another app on that app's pages, or a whole list's sponsorship. A bought numbered place stands at the number bought, and the list moves down one under it. What a maker cannot buy is a fact: founding years, owners, plans and prices are the record's, whoever pays.
Any maker may claim the page it already has, for free, to correct a fact. How WatchRanker is paid for · What is for sale