Toolradar Vendor Posts: A Pilot Update Feed

What a vendor post is

Each post is one of three kinds. A launch announces a new product or a major version. An update announces a feature the company shipped. A deal announces a time-limited offer on the company's own site. A post states one fact with one link; it is not an article. The title takes 12 to 80 characters, the summary 40 to 280, and both are written in English.

Every post carries a date: the day the change shipped or the deal started. That date must fall within the last 30 days. A deal also needs the day it ends, at most 180 days away, and it may carry a promo code of 2 to 40 letters, digits, hyphens or underscores.

Where a post appears, and how it is labelled

Live posts show in four places:

• The public feed at /updates, "What's new in software". It mixes vendor posts with Toolradar's price-change items, newest first, with tabs by kind and a view per product at /updates?tool=<slug>.
• The tool page. A "What's new at" block shows the three newest live posts, and it appears only when there is at least one.
• AI assistants. The get_tool answer over MCP carries up to three live posts as latest_from_vendor, each with its title, summary, date, source URL and the company's name.
• Feeds. RSS at /updates/feed.xml and JSON at /updates.json, with no key. The RSS item links through Toolradar's counter, while the JSON gives the company's own URL as source_url.

Each vendor post shows "Posted by" and the company's name with a verified badge, next to a chip that reads Launch, Update or Deal. A note under the tool page block says the post comes from the product's team and that Toolradar reads each linked page before it shows. The source link reads "Read on" followed by the site's host name. It opens in a new tab with rel="nofollow ugc noopener", and it goes through /api/posts/<id>/go, a redirect that counts the open first.

What a post does not do

A post never enters a ranking, a score, a review or a verdict, and its label always names the company that posted it.

• It does not change a ranking. Rankings, scores and verdicts take no input from a post.
• It does not reach the newsletters. Vendor posts are not fed to Techpresso, Devshot or any other Dupple newsletter, and no path from posts to newsletters exists.
• It does not give search engines a new page. A post has no page of its own, so it adds no indexable URL, and its source link is nofollow ugc.
• It carries no paid boost. Toolradar has not built a paid push for vendor posts.
• It is not a test of the product. Toolradar checks that the linked page names the change, and an AI model reads the post against that page. Nobody tests the product itself.
• It is not promised to any assistant. The answer includes the post, but Toolradar cannot make an assistant cite it.

Who can post during the pilot

Posting is off by default. An administrator sets it to pilot, which opens it to the companies listed on /admin/posts, or to open, which opens it to every verified company. A user can post only when the active company is verified. A site administrator whose active company is verified sees the form whether or not that company is on the list. A company outside the list sees an "Opening soon" page at /company/posts. The assistant tools tell it that posting is in a small pilot and to write to [email protected] to join.

At 15:10:53 UTC on 5 November 2026, a read-only query found the configured vendor-post mode was pilot and the ToolPost table contained zero stored post records across all statuses. The pilot snapshot records that observation; the method describes the query. The application kill switch was not active at the check. The count can change and does not count invitations, eligible companies, views or drafts stored elsewhere.

A vendor post fits a verified company that has a changelog, release notes or an offer page on its own domain, and a change that shipped or started recently. It does not fit news older than the posting window, funding or hiring announcements, comparisons with other products, text written for search engines, or a product whose own site does not yet show the change.

Every post goes to a person until a person has approved two of the company's posts. After that, a post publishes on its own only when all four conditions hold: no post a person refused in the last 90 days; the linked page names the change; the model approves the post; and an administrator has switched on automatic publishing, which is off by default.

How to post, step by step

From the dashboard at /company/posts:

1. Sign in with the verified company and open /company/posts. A company not on the pilot list sees "Opening soon" and nothing else changes.
2. Choose the product and one kind: Launch, Update or Deal. The form checks the rules as you type, shows the post as a preview card, and shows a message under a field once you leave it. Outcome: the Post it button stays off until no rule is broken.
3. Write the title and the summary, then paste the link to the page on your own site that shows the change. Set "Shipped on", or "Starts" for a deal, and for a deal add the end day and an optional code. Outcome: a homepage link or a link to another domain is flagged before you submit.
4. Click "Post it". The server runs the same rules again, then the limits: one post per product a week, four posts per company in 30 days, and one live deal per product. Outcome: the post is stored with the status Checking, or the reason is shown and nothing is stored.
5. Toolradar reads the linked page, following redirects one hop at a time, and asks the moderation model for one verdict. A deal with a code needs that code on the page. The page must contain at least half of the title's key words, rounded up, and never more than three.
6. The decision sets the status. Live: the page passes, the model approves, and the company is trusted with automatic publishing on. In review: a person reads it. Not published: the link leaves the product's site, or the page does not show the change and the model rejects the post. Live and not-published decisions send an email to the person who posted.

From an AI assistant, through the MCP address https://toolradar.com/mcp:

1. Connect the assistant with the setup at /company/connect. The post tools appear only for a company that may post.
2. Ask the assistant to post the release. It calls post_update without confirmation, which returns a preview of the label, title, summary, link and date and says nothing is posted yet. Outcome: nothing is stored.
3. Read the preview and agree to it. The assistant then posts with confirm set to true, and the same checks run. Outcome: the answer says the post was received and gives a post id.
4. Follow the post with list_my_posts, or take it down with withdraw_post and its post id. Outcome: the status and link opens, or the withdrawal.

A live post is read again once it is a week old. Toolradar checks up to 20 posts every six hours. A link that now leads to another site, or returns not found, takes the post down and emails the person who posted the reason. A page Toolradar cannot read stays up.

What gets refused, and the fix

Table: The refusal messages a vendor sees, and what to change.

The first twelve rows are refused by the rules before anything is stored. The last two rows come from the page read and are the only stored posts refused without a person. Everything else that is unclear, such as an unreadable page, a page that does not clearly name the change, or a model that is unsure, goes to a person in review.

What Toolradar reports back

• On /company/posts: the number of live posts, the link opens (how many times a live post's source link was opened from Toolradar), and the posts left in the last 30 days, out of four.
• A status for each post: Checking, In review, Live, Not published with the reason, or Withdrawn.
• An email to the person who posted when a post goes live and when a post is not published, with the reason and a link to post a corrected version. A post in review sends no email.
• For assistants, list_my_posts returns each post's status, the reason if it was not published, when it was posted, when it went live, its link opens and where it shows.

Toolradar counts link opens only. It does not report views, impressions or leads for a single post.

Worked example

Example (fictional company): Ledgerly is an invoicing product made up for this page. Its team ships CSV export for invoices and wants to post about it.

The first draft reads "Ledgerly 3.2 is the best invoicing tool for teams." The form flags "best" as selling rather than informing, and the Post it button stays off until the word is gone.

The version that passes:

• Kind: Update.
• Title: "Ledgerly 3.2 adds CSV export for invoices" (41 characters).
• Summary: "Invoices can now be exported as CSV from the Reports page, with one row per line item. The export follows the filters you set on the list."
• Link: https://ledgerly.example/changelog/3-2, the company's own changelog entry.
• Shipped on: 2026-11-03.

The post passes the length limits, the wording checks, the https link on the product's own domain (not its homepage), the date check and the repeat check. The page check then looks for the title's key words. They are csv, export, invoices, 3.2 and adds, with the product name left out, so three of the five must appear on the changelog entry. The model reads the excerpt and must approve it.

Until a person has approved two of Ledgerly's posts, each one goes to a person and shows as In review. Once the post is live, it appears on the Ledgerly tool page under "What's new at Ledgerly", in the feed and in the assistant answer, and the person who posted receives the "Your post is live" email.

How it compares with the other formats

Table: Toolradar's three formats and the newsletter formats, one line each. No prices are shown.

The label differs by format. A sponsored box carries a visible "Sponsored" label, and its link is rel="sponsored nofollow noopener". A vendor post says "Posted by" the company, and its link is nofollow ugc. A paid position in a buyer guide or /best list sits under the generic line "Some offers on this page may be paid placements or contain affiliate links." A paid pick in a guide shows a Sponsored pill only when its own flag is set, so a paid position is not always labelled Sponsored.

Frequently asked questions