Trust layer
How Actually Uses decides what is real
Every number on ActuallyUses is computed from creator-mention data with receipts: source link, timestamp, short quote, and a sponsored-or-organic label. No editorial opinion, no paid placement in rankings.
“I plan every video in Notion.”
- source
- YouTube
- time
- 05:12
- label
- organic
Public source
YouTube, podcasts, X, and newsletters enter the pipeline as source items.
Tool mention
Extraction captures the tool, usage type, timestamp or position, and a short quote.
Trust label
Rule and model layers classify organic, sponsored, or unclear before scoring.
Weighted signal
Recent, high-confidence, organic usage signals move rankings the most.
Category rankings
What the creator count means
Category lists rank tools by creators with active mention records. Each counted creator must have a public source for that tool. A record is active when its latest mention was within 120 days at the last calculation and no switch away was recorded. Mentions include reported use, recommendations and passing references, including sponsored mentions.
The trending score breaks ties; matching scores are ordered by tool slug. Affiliate payments have no effect. This count describes the creators we track and does not measure a tool’s total users or how often they use it.
The mention total, organic share and trending score use the 90 days before the last score calculation. Organic share is organic mentions divided by organic plus sponsored mentions; unclear labels are excluded. The date on each quote belongs to its source, or to the date we collected it if no publication date is available.
Category cards prefer a source labelled as reported use over a recommendation. If only a recommendation is available, it is labelled as such. Quotes can be older than the counting window. Labels can be wrong; check the linked source for context.
Sponsorship detection
Rules always win before a claim reaches the page.
The deterministic layer checks #ad / #sponsored / #werbung / #anzeige hashtags, sponsor-segment phrases, disclosure language, and affiliate-coded links. A model layer handles subtler cases, but explicit rules override it.
Trending score
Four weights, one signal.
- 14-day half-life makes recent mentions matter most.
- Reach is log-scaled and capped around one million followers.
- Organic counts 4x more than paid.
- Uses and recommends beat passing mentions; criticism can subtract.
Money firewall
Affiliate revenue has no scoring path.
The code that computes rankings has no access to affiliate tables. Money never changes organic rankings or authenticity labels.
Corrections and quality
Every public data point can be challenged.
- Quotes are public only up to 120 characters and always source-linked.
- Corrections are versioned and audited.
- Creators can claim pages and hide false mentions.
- Prompt/model changes must pass precision >=95% and recall >=80% gates.
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