Rank Is Not for Sale — Sponsored Slots Do Not Buy a Handshake

A directory that takes money has one sentence it has to be able to say out loud: the payment did not move the list.

Influzer sells two labeled slots. $249 a month each. A buyer sits at the top of the homepage, the MCP directory, the WebMCP directory, and the handshake scoreboard. Both filled, that is $498 a month — the hosting bill for a registry run by one person, without a venture round.

The buyer gets a Sponsored label and the attention that comes with sitting above the list. They do not get a rank number. They do not get live_ok. Discovery does not learn their name first.

Promote: /mcp/promote · Scoreboard: /mcp/scoreboard · Rules: /mcp/promote/terms

What the slot actually buys

The placement is an ad with a fixed shape. Two concurrent slots. Thirty days. The same card in four places, always with the word Sponsored on it.

Empty slots stay on the page as dashed Available cards. That is deliberate. The ad rail is visible even when nobody has paid, so a filled card cannot pretend it was organic.

What the money cannot change

• The numbered Top 100. Scoreboard rows stay in catalog order. A pin has no rank. It is not inserted at position 3 because someone paid.
• The handshake. live_ok, auth_required, and unreachable come from initialize and tools/list. A pin that is not a catalog server is labeled Sponsored — handshake unchanged. Payment does not flip a gray probe to indigo.
• Discovery. search_mcp_servers and recommend_mcp_servers walk the catalog. There is no sponsor field in the tool result, and no sort key for who paid. The agent still gets safety_badge: null.
• A SAFE badge. Still none. The placement terms forbid describing the ad as certified, ranked, or handshaked because money changed hands. An ad that does that can come down, and the fee for that period stays.

Why the agent path stays clean

Humans skim. Agents repeat the first thing they were handed.

If Discovery started returning paid pins as top matches, every Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor session that searches the catalog would launder an ad into a recommendation. That is the failure mode of app-store search, and it is the one this directory refuses.

The pin is a page object. The tool is a catalog object. Same site, different contract. Connect Discovery at https://www.influzer.ai/mcp/discovery and ask for a capability. You get listings. You do not get an invoice.

That split is the same one as not safe — just honest and policy before plugins: facts in the tool result, judgment on a list a human can name.

How to read the homepage

The band under search says Sponsored · paid placement · handshake unchanged. The link on the right is the open-slot count and the price, not a quality score.

Under that, the funding block is the operating model in one line: no VC, and no pay-to-rank. The meter is this month’s funded total against the $498 goal. The button is a purchase. The handshake line under it — live, auth, HTTPS hosts — is the Top 100 clock, and a slot sale does not move it.

“How slots work” and the button go to the same page. The lead line is the whole policy: you buy traffic and a Sponsored label. You do not buy live_ok.

For someone buying a slot

1. The thing being promoted has to be a real MCP server, a developer tool, or related infrastructure, and you need the right to use the name.
2. The blurb has to describe what it does. No “SAFE,” no “approved,” no invented handshake.
3. The link goes to your Influzer listing or a real HTTPS endpoint.
4. Accept the placement terms before checkout. Breaking them is how an ad comes down.

Two slots. When both are taken, the page says so and points at a waitlist. The cap is the scarcity. There is no auction, because neither buyer has a rank to outbid.

For everyone else

If a card says Sponsored, treat it as an ad and then read the listing the way you would any other: tools, transport, handshake. If a row on the scoreboard has a number, nobody paid for that number.

If an agent tells you a server is “ranked first on Influzer,” ask whether it means the ad rail or the table. Those are different objects. The October skill still holds: search, handshake, paste — and do not badge it SAFE.

Quick answers

Does a sponsored server jump the Top 100?

No. The pin renders above the table. The numbered rows stay in catalog order.

Can I pay to become live_ok?

No. Handshake status is a probe fact. Unreachable stays unreachable.

Will Discovery recommend a sponsor first?

No. Search and recommend do not take payment as an input.

Is the WebMCP pin a WebMCP site?

No. It is a labeled MCP ad on the WebMCP page. Your website is not an MCP server, and a sponsor card is not a site tool either. MCP Apps are not WebMCP.

Where do the rules live?

/mcp/promote/terms, version dated 10 October 2026.

Related

• Promote an MCP server
• Handshake scoreboard
• Not safe — just honest
• Most MCP servers are still demoware
• Discovery setup

Final thought

A registry can charge for attention or it can charge for rank. It should not pretend those are the same product.

Two slots. A Sponsored label. A handshake that still means what the probe saw.

Read the scoreboard for the clock. Read the offer if you want the label. Do not confuse the card above the table with the table.