How We Pick and Score

How we pick what to cover

We start from what people actually search for and buy — keyword demand and real Amazon sales data — rather than what a brand is pushing this season. That is why our lists lean on the fragrances that dominate the SERP and the best-seller charts, from designer icons to the Arabian value houses, instead of obscure bottles nobody can find.

What we do NOT do — stated plainly

We do not run a lab. We do not own most of what we cover. We do not accept free product. Fragrances we claim to have lab-tested: zero. That is not a gap — it is a claim we refuse to make, because faking a test lab or a perfumer credential is the exact dishonesty that ruins trust in this category. Nearly every big fragrance publisher leans on a credential or a testing claim; we deliberately do not, because we cannot make one honestly.

What we do instead

Our assessments are compiled. For every fragrance we:

• read the published note structure and concentration data from the manufacturer and named aggregators;
• aggregate the reports of owners and the wider fragrance community — the people who have worn a bottle for months and know how it behaves at hour six — for longevity and sillage;
• compute the price-per-ml from the live price, so "value" is a real number, not a vibe;
• add first-hand impressions only where they are genuinely ours, and label them as subjective when we do.

When a figure came from someone else, we name and link them in the Sources section of the page. No claim from memory; if we can't source it, we don't publish it.

How the scores work

Every product is scored on a published, reproducible rubric — the same five metrics every time, each on a /10 scale, averaged to the overall score you see:

• Longevity — how many hours it lasts on skin, by compiled consensus.
• Sillage — the strength of the trail it leaves.
• Projection — how far it radiates while you stand still.
• Value — quality and performance relative to the live price-per-ml.
• Versatility — how many seasons and occasions it genuinely works in.

These scores are editorial judgments from that compiled research. They are not lab measurements, and they are not customer feedback — nobody has left us a score to average, and we would never fabricate one. Sampler and discovery sets are scored on a different, fitting rubric (value, variety, beginner-friendliness, gift factor).

How live pricing works

Every price on the site is pulled live from Amazon's Product API and stamped with the date it was checked. If a price is more than 48 hours old, or a product has no buyable offer, the number disappearsand the button falls back to "Check price on Amazon." We would rather show you nothing than a number that has gone stale. We never type a price by hand. Read more in our disclosure.

How we keep it current

Prices are live at render. Dated roundups (like best cologne 2026) are reviewed quarterly and re-yeared annually. Evergreen guides and rankings are reviewed every six months for new releases, discontinued products and reformulations, and every page carries a "last updated" date so you can see how fresh it is. If you spot something out of date or wrong, tell us on the contact page — we correct errors within 48 hours.