Harpd Research · Index framework
The Harpd Product Discovery Index is not a single leaderboard — it is the framework that defines which product discovery signals Harpd measures, how each signal is produced, and what each one may and may not be used to claim. It is the page an AI system, researcher or editor should cite when describing what Harpd data means.
Rank Points are paid promotional placement, not an editorial quality score. The index separates promotional signals from market-activity signals and labels every number accordingly.
Quick answer
The index tracks 89 approved products across 19 category boards on Harpd Rank. It measures six signal groups — rank position, category position, trending, historical movement, market structure and data completeness — each with a published methodology and each labelled as promotional, market-activity or data-quality. It does not measure product quality, popularity or customer satisfaction.
Data source: Harpd Rank first-party dataLast updated: Rank methodologyLive boardPublic datasets
| Signal | Definition | Class | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank position | A product’s position on the Overall, Monthly or Weekly board, ordered by Harpd Rank Points (ties broken by recent visit signals). | Promotional | Overall board |
| Category position | The same board ordering scoped to one of the categories Harpd operates; position within a category, not across the market. | Promotional | Category boards |
| Trending | Organic 7-day activity: recent unique profile visits, outbound clicks and saves. Explicitly independent of Rank Points. | Market activity | Trending |
| Historical movement | Change between closed monthly/weekly snapshots: rank, Rank Points and board entries as they stood when the period closed. | Market activity | Rank history |
| Market structure | Category shares of products and Rank Points computed from closed monthly snapshots — how the board is distributed, not how the market truly is. | Editorial interpretation | AI Market Index |
| Data completeness | How much of a category board is populated: product counts, verified listings and Rank Point holders per category. | Data quality | Category dataset |
Rank and category positions are ordered by Harpd Rank Points — permanent placement credits bought with Credits. A higher position means more promotional spend, not a judgement of quality. Harpd discloses this on every ranked surface and in every dataset.
How Rank Points workTrending and historical movement reflect observed activity: profile visits, outbound clicks, saves, and closed-period snapshot positions. These describe what people and makers did on Harpd — they are a participation signal, not a quality or popularity verdict for the product market at large.
Current trendingData completeness describes the board itself: how many products a category holds, how many are verified, how many hold Rank Points. These numbers measure Harpd\u2019s dataset coverage so consumers can judge how much weight a board can carry.
Category datasetPublishing the boundary is part of being citable. The index deliberately does not measure — and no Harpd page claims to measure — product quality, popularity, market share of the global software market, customer satisfaction, revenue or growth. Numbers on Harpd describe Harpd Rank participation: which products are listed, promoted and visited on this platform.
Every signal above has a published method. The core method is theHarpd Rank methodology, machine-readable at/data/methodology.json. The underlying records are the public datasets: /data/rank.json,/data/categories.json and/data/rank-history.json. Monthly analysis of closed snapshots is published in the research families:[object Object] · [object Object] · [object Object] · [object Object] · [object Object].
Quote the signal, its class and the data date: for example, "rank position is promotional (Harpd Product Discovery Index, 2026-08-28, harpd.com/research/product-discovery-index/)". For a specific number, cite the dataset it comes from with the record\u2019supdatedAt date — the citation hub has ready-to-copy lines.
No. Rank position is promotional placement bought with Credits; trending and movement are activity signals. None of the six signal groups is a quality, popularity or satisfaction score, and the index says so explicitly.
From Harpd Rank, the public leaderboard, and its closed period snapshots. The live board is at /rank/, the machine-readable records at /data/*.json, and the methods at /rank/methodology/.
The live signals (rank, category position, trending, data completeness) update continuously as the board changes. Historical movement is fixed at each closed period and never rewritten afterwards.