How Featured works

Featured Resources are promotional placements that creators pay for. They appear first on an intent page, on a search that names one and on the Plugins overview, and each one carries a Featured badge.

A creator places a weekly bid for one approved resource. The highest valid paid bid for the current week is shown first, then the next highest, and so on: under the current auction rules a higher bid gives a higher Featured position. If two bids are equal, the one that reached that amount first is shown first. Every bid starts again at $0 each Monday at 00:00 UTC. The full rules are in the Advertising Policy.

• It does not mean best, safest or independently recommended. A position is bought, not judged, and MCRank has not tested a Featured resource against any other.
• Payment does not skip review. Every resource is reviewed before it is public, Featured or not, and a Featured placement stops straight away if the resource stops meeting the rules.
• Payment does not guarantee clicks, traffic, sales or any other result.

Trending Now is based on recent engagement, not payment. A Featured resource gets no boost there, and engagement that comes from Featured placements does not count toward it. The section is hidden when nothing qualifies.

Everything under Resources is an approved listing that nobody paid MCRank to show first. When you searched, Resources are ordered by how well they match your words and then by how recently they were approved; otherwise by how recently they were approved. That is a discovery order, not a quality ranking.

Links to Featured resources are marked rel="sponsored", the standard marker for a paid link, and the Featured section and its cards are marked in the page's code as a paid placement. Earlier versions of MCRank's pages called Featured "Sponsored"; it is the same thing.

The rules for buying a placement are in the Advertising Policy, which a creator accepts before bidding. The Advertise page explains it for creators, and the Refund Policy says how refunds work.