G2's current documentation says Grid placement is calculated algorithmically and cannot be changed manually, including by G2 employees. That is the key distinction from a sponsored directory: paying G2 can buy profile, campaign, analytics and content-licensing features, but it cannot buy the coordinates of a service provider on the Grid. G2's own pricing FAQ is equally direct that it is not a pay-to-play ranking system.
For agencies, the score has two components — not a published 50/50 split
The service-provider model differs from the software model. Satisfaction draws heavily on service-specific review responses: Professionalism, Expertise of Team, Responsiveness, Execution Ability and Communication Skills. Review volume is also high-importance; recency has medium importance and completeness has low importance. Market Presence/Proficiency assesses reach and experience through factors such as verified category expertise for ecosystem providers, company age, reviewer-country diversity, operating countries and supported languages. Scores are normalised from 0 to 100 within each category, so a provider's position depends on its own inputs and their distribution among category competitors.
Older summaries — including an earlier version of our broader marketplace guide — described G2 Score as a fixed 50% Satisfaction and 50% Market Presence split. G2's methodology updated on 18 February 2026 names the two components but does not assign that fixed weighting. The defensible current formulation is therefore “Satisfaction plus Market Presence/Proficiency,” not “half and half.” This guide and the related marketplace comparison use the current wording.
Review velocity helps only when the reviews qualify
More and better recent reviews can move the Satisfaction component, but raw review count is not a shortcut. G2 applies review decay from submission onward, recalculates it daily, gives reviews stronger weight through roughly the first 18 months, and accelerates the decay after that. At about three years a review retains roughly 3% of its original weight. Updating an existing review resets its decay. That makes a steady, representative review programme more useful than a one-off spike.
Two visible review types do not feed the ranking at all. Reviews from business partners such as resellers and reviews from guest users may remain on G2 with labels, but G2 excludes them from star ratings, G2 Score, Satisfaction, Market Presence and other ranking algorithms because their relationship or usage context can bias the evidence. An agency should never report these as Grid-moving reviews.