How results are ordered.

HONESTY90 starts with an upstream candidate set, then applies its own ranking rules to surface useful, original, and primary sources while reducing duplicates and low-value SEO pages.

What we optimize for

Intent match comes first. When a query clearly asks for an official source, documentation, recent information, or first-hand community experience, the ranking layer can adjust accordingly. We also limit unnecessary repetition from the same domain or publisher family.

What we do not optimize for

HONESTY90 does not rank results to maximize advertising revenue, time on site, or a behavioral profile. V0.2 does not personalize ranking using your identity or prior search history.

Upstream search

V0.2 uses Brave Search API for web results and Brave News Search API for current news. HONESTY90 is not claiming to maintain a full independent web or news index. The product value is the privacy posture, interface, transparency, clustering, source-diversity rules, and ranking layer applied on top of the upstream result sets. Top Stories uses a shorter upstream freshness window; ranking weighs recency alongside relevance. Dates may reflect publication or a later update reported by the provider, and are not independently verified. Small or unavailable images are omitted.

News significance

Top Stories weighs national and international scope, systemic impact, severe events and related coverage separately from recency. Routine local incidents and generic news landing pages may be downranked. These are imperfect headline-based rules, not editorial judgments or political balance. Publisher identity alone does not determine significance. No location profile is used.

News clustering and source diversity

News results may group headlines that appear to describe the same event. Clustering is based on deterministic similarity rules and can make mistakes, so a cluster should be read as related coverage, not proof that every article is identical. Source counts represent distinct publisher families in the returned coverage; they do not claim editorial or organizational independence. Top-story presentation also reduces repeated exposure from the same publisher family when alternatives are available.

Why this result?

When HONESTY90 makes a meaningful ranking adjustment, the result can expose a short explanation such as primary source, query match, freshness relevance, community intent, or domain diversity. These are product signals, not claims that a page is objectively true.

Why 90?

“Absolute honesty isn’t always the most diplomatic nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.”

— TARS, Interstellar

HONESTY90 takes the idea in its own direction: be direct, useful, and transparent without pretending certainty where none exists.