Version 1.0 · Published 12 September 2026

How WEM ranks what it shows

A comparison service ought to be able to say what decides the order of what it shows you. For WEM the answer is short, because the thing that distorts most comparisons — what a retailer pays — is not one of the inputs.

This describes what determines the order of the offers and products WEM shows, on the website, in the browser extension, and in answers WEM gives to AI assistants. It does not describe travel availability ordering, which follows the partner’s own results, or the creator marketplace.

The main parameters

  1. Price, lowest first

    Decisive

    Product comparison pages, the extension panel, and agent answers

    Where WEM shows several retailers selling one product, they are ordered by price, cheapest first. Nothing else changes that order.

  2. Delivered total, where postage is known

    Decisive

    Search results sorted by price

    Sorting by price ranks on what you actually pay: item plus postage where the retailer states it. Where postage is unknown the item price is used, which is a lower bound, and a tie is broken toward the offer whose total is complete — so an offer with a known delivered price is never pushed below an equal-looking one that may cost more at checkout.

  3. One retailer at a time, in unsorted search

    Secondary

    Search results before you choose a sort

    Unsorted results are taken from each retailer in turn rather than in blocks, so no retailer occupies the top of the page by virtue of returning more rows. Choosing a sort replaces this entirely.

  4. Relevance to what you asked for

    Filter, not an order

    Search, and answers given to AI assistants

    A result has to be the thing you asked about. Matches are made on the barcode where one exists, then on the catalogue entry, and only then on the words in the title. Where a match cannot clear the bar the answer is no answer rather than the closest available guess.

  5. Whether the price can be quoted at all

    Filter, not an order

    Every surface

    A row whose link opens a search page rather than the item, or which carries no usable price, is withheld rather than ranked — and counted, so the number withheld is visible rather than silently dropped.

  6. How the price was obtained

    Secondary

    Agent answers and verification

    Prices are labelled by where they came from and when they were seen. Evidence strength does not reorder offers, but it decides what WEM is willing to call verified rather than indicative.

  7. Affiliate commission

    Never a factor

    Nowhere

    The commission a retailer pays, and whether a retailer pays at all, is not an input to any ordering above. No retailer can pay for position in a comparison. WEM carries no advertising in comparison results.

  8. Payment by a retailer for placement

    Never a factor

    Nowhere

    WEM does not sell placement in comparison results. Anything sponsored elsewhere on the site is labelled as sponsored where it appears.

What an assistant is told

When WEM answers an AI assistant, the answer carries the basis of the order as a short machine-readable value, so the assistant can state it rather than guess:

price_asc
Ordered by price, lowest first. Commission is not an input.
delivered_price_asc
Ordered by delivered price where postage is stated, item price otherwise. Commission is not an input.
price_desc
Ordered by price, highest first, because you asked for that order.
rating_desc
Ordered by retailer rating, because you asked for that order.
retailer_interleave
Taken from each retailer in turn, so no retailer leads by volume. Commission is not an input.
relevance
Ordered by how well each result matches what you asked for.

Related