How Choice researches companies

Choice finds public information about what companies do. Automated tools help with the research, and every finding links to its source. A company page must meet the rules below before it appears in search results.

How companies are selected

Choice began with a small group of well-known companies added by hand.

After you explicitly allow domain checks, the extension asks Choice for an existing company record when you visit a website. It sends the bare domain and nothing else, such as target.com — never the full web address, the page you are on or anything you type. There is no account and no login. An unknown domain is not saved or automatically queued for research. See what Choice never sees.

How sources are found

Choice searches public records for clear examples of what a company said or did. It looks at news, the company’s own website and original records linked by other sources.

News articles

News reports can show what happened, when it happened and how the company responded.

Company reports

Reports, policies and press releases show what the company says, promises or shares publicly.

Government records

Government filings and notices can show investigations, penalties and other official actions.

NGO and nonprofit reports

Watchdogs and public-interest groups can provide investigations, reports and links to original records.

Court documents

Court records show what was claimed, what was settled and what a court decided.

Regulatory findings

Regulators publish investigations, rulings, warnings and fines.

Independent research

Universities, research groups and outside experts can study what companies do.

Company-controlled sources

A company’s reports, policies and press releases can be useful, but they tell the company’s side. They never count as independent proof.

Independent sources

Independent evidence comes from outside the company. It can come from journalists, regulators, courts, researchers, universities and nonprofit groups.

The same story may appear on several websites. Choice groups copied reports together so one story is not counted several times.

Which people Choice researches

Choice researches people who can make or materially influence a company’s direction—not everyone who works there. That includes current chief executives and executive chairs, current board members, controlling shareholders, and investors with documented rights such as appointing directors or approving major company decisions. A founder’s historical connection is shown separately from any current authority.

A job title, investment or shareholding is not enough by itself. Ordinary employees, passive investors and non-controlling shareholders are excluded unless a source documents a specific governance or decision-making role. Choice keeps the exact title used by the source and explains why each included person belongs in the company record.

Every included person receives the same bounded personal-action research whether the available evidence is favorable, unfavorable, mixed or empty. Company actions are never assigned to a person merely because they lead the company, and personal actions are never presented as company actions.

How research becomes a finding

  1. Match the right company

    Choice checks the website, brand and owner so a story is not given to the wrong company.

  2. Find a clear claim

    Choice looks for something the company said or did—not an opinion or a vague impression.

  3. Save the source

    Choice saves the exact words, link, publisher and date so you can check the evidence yourself.

  4. Sort it by issue

    Choice connects the finding to an issue such as privacy, workers, climate or political spending.

  5. Check the match

    Choice checks that the source supports the finding and names the right company.

  6. Group the same story

    If several articles describe the same event, Choice groups them together. Copies do not count as extra proof.

How Choice uses automation

Choice uses automated tools, including AI, to find public sources, read them, sort them and connect them to the right company and issue.

Before a company page appears in search results, automatic checks make sure it has enough findings from enough different sources. AI cannot publish a weak page just because it sounds confident.

Automation can make mistakes. It can misunderstand a source, pick the wrong date, repeat the same story or connect something to the wrong company. That is why every finding links to its source and Choice has a public corrections process.

What a company page needs

A company page does not appear in search results until it has all three:

  • At least three findingsEach finding must have a source anyone can open.
  • At least two different publishersTwo stories from the same publisher still count as one publisher.
  • At least one independent sourceThe company cannot be the only source.

Until then, the page stays out of search results while Choice keeps researching. Meeting these rules means there is enough evidence to publish. It does not mean every fact about the company has been found.

You choose what matters

Choice does not decide whether a company is “good” or “bad.” Company pages show sourced actions by topic. You choose the issues that matter to you, and the extension shows how each company lines up with those choices.

Your choices only change which findings matter to you. They never change the company record. Companies cannot pay to be included, removed, moved higher or shown more favorably.

Those choices stay in your browser. Choice never receives them, so Choice cannot see which issues you picked.

What Choice never sees

Choice works without knowing who you are. There is no account, no login and no profile, and the values you choose never reach our servers.

The extension makes no request and reads no site domain until you explicitly allow domain checks in its first-run screen. Declining keeps every network feature off. You can withdraw that choice later in the extension’s Settings.

  • Only the bare domain. The extension sends the domain by itself — target.com — and nothing more. Never the full web address, the page path, what you searched for, what is on the page or anything you type into it. The server rejects any request carrying more than a bare domain.
  • No account, no login, no identifier. A lookup carries no account, no sign-in, no device ID and no tracking cookie. There is nothing in it that points back to you.
  • Lookups are never logged. The domain is not written to a log, a history or a per-person record. Choice stores company research, not who looked at what — so there is no browsing history here to leak, sell or hand over.
  • Your values stay on your device. The issues you choose to be warned about are saved in your own browser and never leave your device. Choice cannot see what you selected, because Choice never receives it.
  • The matching happens on your device. Your browser compares the company’s evidence against your issues locally. Choice sends the company record out; your side of the comparison never comes back.
  • No tracking in the extension. The extension sends no analytics, usage events, advertising identifiers or error reports. After you allow domain checks, it can ask Choice for the current site’s company record; it also requests aggregate issue-coverage counts, searches when you type in its search box and sends a report only when you press the button to say a finding is wrong. These operational requests carry no account, device ID or analytics cookie.

A miss is not saved or turned into a research job. Choice processes the bare domain long enough to look for an existing published company record, then returns “unknown.” Cloudflare processes the bare-domain request in transit as Choice’s network and security provider; Choice’s origin does not write the domain to an access log. Full details are in the privacy policy.