Methodology

How the tape is made

What we collect

Each scrape reads a public leaderboard: domain, bid, rank, and — when the board publishes them — clicks and people online. Fields a platform does not report stay null. We never fabricate a click count or an online user to complete a chart.

Freshness

LIVE means the last successful scrape is younger than two scrape intervals. DELAYED is younger than six. STALE is younger than a day. OFFLINE is older than that, or never succeeded. A purple dot is not a promise that a third-party homepage is up — only that our last read was recent.

Platform ranking

Boards are scored against the current cohort, not against an all-time peak. The mix is bid value, 24-hour activity, listing count, reported clicks, and freshness. outbid.lol is usually first because it is the largest public book, not because we prefer it.

Website ranking

Sites are ordered by best bid across boards. Total exposure is the sum of reported bids for that domain. A site can appear on several platforms; we do not merge distinct subdomains.

BidEconomics Attention Index

BAI is 100 times a weighted mix of current activity versus a documented baseline: 35% total bid value, 25% active listings, 20% bid velocity, 12% click activity, 8% platform participation. Each ratio is clamped. BAI is not a price, not a security, and not a forecast.

Market pulse

Pulse compresses recent bid change, event frequency, click change, and listing growth into a 0–100 score labeled Cooling, Quiet, Stable, Heating Up, or Very Hot. It describes competition, not investment merit.

First-party board

Bids placed on BidEconomics itself are prepaid CPC. Rank is highest cost-per-click, then earliest placement. Remaining balance is not the same as a third-party “top bid” jackpot — we still show it, marked BIDECONOMICS, so the book stays complete.