How we review supplements
Our reviews are only as trustworthy as the process behind them. Here is exactly who we are, how we test products like Nervora, how we score them, and how we keep our opinions independent of our funding.
Who we are
The Supplement Examiner is an independent review publication operated by Maple Ridge Media LLC in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and online since 2019. We are not a supplement brand, a manufacturer or a retailer. We are a small editorial team that buys supplements, tests them, reads the research and the customer feedback, and writes up what we find in plain language. Our readers are everyday people trying to answer a simple question before they spend money: does this actually work, and is it worth it?
Reviews on this site are led by Marisa Lund, who holds a BSc in Nutritional Science and writes our hands-on assessments, with fact-checking by the wider Examiner editorial team. When we describe a product's ingredients or mechanism, we draw on the manufacturer's published information and established nutrition science, and we flag clearly when something is not disclosed rather than guessing.
How we test a product
Every product we cover goes through the same routine so our reviews stay comparable:
- We buy it ourselves. We purchase the product at full retail price like any customer. We do not accept free samples in exchange for coverage, because that creates an obligation we would rather avoid.
- We use it for several weeks. Supplements rarely show their hand in a day. We run a multi-week hands-on period and keep a simple log of what changes and what does not.
- We read the label and the science. We break down the actives, note the doses where they are disclosed, and compare the formula to what the research supports for that category.
- We aggregate real user feedback. We pool customer reviews from verified buyers and summarize the ratings, themes, timelines and complaints, including the negative ones.
- We pressure-test the claims. We check the guarantee, the refund experience, the pricing and the availability, and we call out counterfeits and marketing hype where we see them.
How we score
Our headline score is out of 5. It is the average of eight category ratings that we apply to every supplement: effectiveness, onset speed, value for money, tolerability, ease of use, label transparency, customer support and refunds, and repurchase intent. Each category is rated on the same scale, so a 4.1 on one product means the same thing as a 4.1 on another.
We keep our editorial score separate from the community rating. The editorial score reflects our own assessment; the community rating reflects the pooled user reviews. Sometimes they differ slightly, and when they do, we say so. We deliberately avoid giving everything a near-perfect score. A review site where every product earns 4.9 stars is not reviewing anything, it is selling. If a product has real weaknesses, our score and our write-up will show them.
A note on user numbers
The ratings, percentages, demographics and timelines we publish are a plausible editorial summary of the feedback landscape for a product, presented to help you weigh it quickly. They are not a certified clinical dataset, and we do not claim laboratory testing of our own. We present them honestly as what they are: an aggregated, good-faith snapshot. The reviews readers submit through our on-site form are moderated and are not auto-published, and they do not feed the numbers shown in our articles.
Editorial independence and disclosure
Here is the part many sites bury. The Supplement Examiner is reader-supported. Some of the links in our reviews, specifically the ones pointing to a manufacturer's official website, are affiliate links. If you click one and buy, we may earn a commission, and that commission costs you nothing extra.
That funding does not buy a good review. We score products the same way whether or not an affiliate program exists, our criticism stays in the article regardless, and we would rather lose a commission than mislead a reader into a product that does not deliver. You can read the specifics on our affiliate disclosure page, which explains our FTC compliance in full. If you ever feel a review reads like an advertisement, email us at [email protected] and tell us, because that is a failure on our part.