How scoring works

How AtlasForgeX scores a lead.

Most tools give a company one number and hide how it was made. AtlasForgeX scores every company on two independent axes: one asks whether a lead is real and reachable, the other asks whether it is a blind spot your competitors never see. Below are the exact point bands behind both, and the matrix that combines them.

Two questions, two scores

Two engines, never merged into one number

A single score has to choose between "safe and qualified" and "untapped opportunity". Those are different questions, so AtlasForgeX keeps them on separate axes and shows both side by side. You decide the trade-off, not a hidden weighting.

Trust score — "is this a real, qualified lead?"

  • Scale of 0 to 1000.
  • Rewards confirmed existence, clean contact data and strong fit signals.
  • This is the axis that overlaps with what Apollo or ZoomInfo would call a good record.
  • Sorts leads into four tiers: HOT, WARM, COOL, DROP.

Goldmine score — "is this a blind spot competitors miss?"

  • Scale of 0 to 100.
  • Rewards a confirmed way in plus low visibility plus growth intent.
  • Deliberately favours small, new and quiet companies the databases never stored.
  • Never reads the Trust score. The two stay independent on purpose.
Axis one

The Trust score and its four tiers

The Trust score runs from 0 to 1000 and answers a simple question: is this a real company you can actually reach and sell to? Once scored, every lead lands in one of four tiers by these thresholds.

TierTrust scoreWhat it means
HOT500 and aboveReal, reachable and a strong fit. Contact first.
WARM280 to 499Solid lead, worth working once the hot list is cleared.
COOL150 to 279Real but thin. Often needs enrichment before outreach.
DROPbelow 150Too little to act on, or a known noise domain. Filtered out.

Known junk domains (directories, aggregators, parked pages) are hard-dropped before scoring even begins, so they never waste a slot on your list.

Axis two

The Goldmine score, built from access to revenue

Where Trust asks "is this enterprise-grade?", Goldmine asks "can I turn this into a deal, and is it invisible to everyone else?". It is built from one base and two bonuses, minus a small penalty for dead or fake companies. Here are the exact points.

Contactability base — up to 70 points

The foundation. A confirmed way in is worth more than any other signal, so the base rewards the strength of the contact route you found.

Signal foundPoints
Phone only8 to 12
Generic email (info@, contact@)15
Role email (sales@, ceo@)22
Personal email (first.last@)28
Decision-maker identified+18
Multi-channel reachable (2 or more of email / phone / DM)+15
LinkedIn present (B2B verified route)+7
Facebook present (local presence)+4
Domain located but no contact yet3

Visibility bonus — up to 20 points

This is the inversion that defines Goldmine. A database tool penalises a thin, quiet website. Goldmine treats each gap as a small bonus, because a company nobody can find is a channel nobody else is working.

Gap foundPoints
No social presence (untapped channel)+4
No analytics or marketing stack (greenfield)+4
No content marketing+3
Minimal web presence+3
Outdated web (upgrade-friendly)+3
Limited search visibility+3

Intent bonus — up to 15 points

Signals that a company is growing right now and is therefore primed to buy.

Growth signalPoints
Hiring sales roles+6
Newly registered domain+5
Actively seeking clients+5
Active careers page+3
Recent news coverage+2

The only thing that reduces the score

Penalties (up to 30 points) apply to one thing only: companies that are dead, parked, scam or genuinely unreachable. A fresh business on a national TLD with no contacts yet is not punished, because that is exactly the kind of lead Goldmine exists to surface. Everything else is base or bonus. The total is then clamped to a clean 0 to 100.

goldmine_score = contactability_base (0–70) + visibility_bonus (0–20) + intent_bonus (0–15) − penalties (0–30), clamped to 0–100

The two axes together

The tier matrix

Because the scores are independent, every lead falls into one of four quadrants. This is where the AtlasForgeX advantage shows up: the top-right and bottom-right cells are leads the database tools throw away.

Goldmine 60 and aboveGoldmine below 60
Trust high (qualified) Commercial blind spotReal, reachable, and still invisible to competitors. The best of both. Contact today. QualifiedA solid lead, but the same one every other tool already sells. Apollo-overlap territory.
Trust low Emerging businessNew or quiet, contactable, growing. The AtlasForgeX signature: tomorrow's customer, found first. ColdLittle to act on yet. Re-check after enrichment.
A worked example

Why one company scores 40 and 70 at the same time

A small Finnish firm Atlas found via the national register

Atlas located the company, a decision-maker's name, a personal email, a phone number and a clear outreach angle. The website is thin, with no analytics stack and no social presence.

Trust score: ~40 — not "enterprise enough" by classic qualification Goldmine score: ~70 — contactable today, and invisible to rivals

A single-number tool would bury this lead at 40 and you would never see it. The same thin website that lowers the Trust score is what raises the Goldmine score, because nobody else is working this company. That is the entire reason the two axes stay separate.

Questions

FAQ

Does a high score mean a big company?+
No. The Trust score asks whether a lead is real and reachable, not whether it is large. The Goldmine score deliberately rewards small, new and quiet companies, because those are the ones your competitors never see.
Why two scores instead of one?+
Because they answer different questions. A single number forces a tool to choose between "safe and qualified" and "untapped opportunity". Keeping the two axes separate lets you see both at once and pick the trade-off yourself.
Can I see why a lead got its score?+
Yes. Every score comes with a plain-language list of the exact signals that produced it, so you can verify the reasoning instead of trusting a black box. See what every lead tells you.
Where does the data behind the score come from?+
From public national company registers and the open web, gathered live on your own machine. There are no resold contact databases and no per-contact credits. See how Atlas finds hidden companies.

See the scores on your own market

Run AtlasForgeX on your country and category, and watch every company arrive with both numbers and the reasons behind them.

Download for Windows, free 1-day trial