How ranking works
Positions are earned by unique-visitor views: one visitor per listing per 24 hours, automated traffic excluded, no paid placement.
One visitor, one view
A view is recorded per unique visitor per listing, once every 24 hours. Reloading a page does not move a listing up.
Visitors are counted, not identified
The counter stores a salted one-way hash of the IP address. Raw IPs are never written to disk, and there is no cross-site tracking.
Automated traffic is excluded
Known crawlers and scripted clients are recognised and skipped, so the board reflects human attention.
The tail stays reachable
A discovery panel of equal size samples the whole board with a bias away from the leaders, so the top entries cannot freeze the queue.
The counting rule, precisely
| Unit counted | One page view of a listing page |
|---|---|
| Deduplication | Same visitor, same listing: once per 24 hours |
| Visitor identity | Salted one-way hash of the IP address; raw addresses are never stored |
| Excluded traffic | Known crawlers, scripted clients and preview fetchers |
| Tiebreak | Imported reference position from the source board |
| Paid placement | None available |
Why there is a discovery panel
A pure view-ranked board has a failure mode: whoever reaches the top
collects the clicks that keep them at the top. To stop the queue freezing,
an equal-sized discovery panel samples the entire board with a weight of
1 / sqrt(position). Leaders still appear, but every listing
keeps a real chance of being seen.
Frequently asked questions
How is the ranking calculated?
Listings are ordered by the number of unique visitors who have opened their page. Each visitor counts once per listing per 24 hours, and automated clients are excluded. When two listings have the same view count, the imported reference order is used as a stable tiebreak.
Can I pay to rank higher on outbid.forum?
No. There is no bidding and no paid placement. The only way a listing moves up is by being opened by more unique visitors.
Does refreshing the page increase my count?
No. The same visitor is counted at most once per listing per 24-hour window, so reloads and repeat visits within a day do not add views.
What is the discovery panel for?
It gives the long tail a structurally fair chance of being seen. The panel samples the entire board with a weight that favours lower positions, so attention is not permanently locked to the leaders.
Where does the listing data come from?
The initial set of listings was imported from the public outbid.lol leaderboard on 2026-09-02. Prices and click totals shown as reference values are that snapshot, not live figures from this site.
Is my IP address stored?
No. Only a salted, truncated one-way hash is kept, purely to prevent one visitor from being counted twice in a day. The hash cannot be reversed to an address.