Of everything printed on a botanical supplement panel, the standardisation line is the most informative and the most frequently absent. It is also the one that decides whether a milligram figure means anything at all.
Why a plant is not a consistent raw material
A batch of ginkgo leaves is not like a batch of a synthesised compound. Growing conditions, harvest timing, which part of the plant was used, how it was dried and how it was extracted all change the concentration of active compounds in the finished powder. Two harvests from the same field can differ substantially.
So "Ginkgo Biloba 120 mg" tells you the weight of plant material in the capsule and nothing about its strength. The same figure could sit above a potent extract or a weak one.
What standardisation does about it
A standardised extract is processed and tested so that a named marker compound is present at a guaranteed percentage. The manufacturer measures it and commits to it batch after batch.
That single step makes three things possible: batches become comparable to each other, the product becomes comparable to the research, and a pharmacist can give you a meaningful answer about interactions.
The markers worth recognising
Ginkgo Biloba — typically 24% flavone glycosides and 6% terpene lactones. This specification is the one used in the great majority of the published human trials, which is precisely why it matters whether a bottle meets it.
Green tea extract — usually standardised to total catechins or specifically to EGCG. The percentage varies widely between products, and so does the caffeine that comes with it.
Turmeric — standardised to curcuminoid content, commonly around 95%. Note that this describes what is in the capsule, not what gets absorbed, which is a separate and larger problem for this ingredient.
Marigold — standardised to lutein, often with zeaxanthin reported alongside.
Why extract ratios are a weaker signal
You will also see ratios like 10:1, meaning ten parts raw plant concentrated into one part extract. It sounds precise and tells you less than it appears to, because it describes concentration without specifying what was concentrated. A high ratio with no marker percentage can still be weak in the compounds that matter.
Where both appear, the marker percentage is the more useful number.
How this interacts with proprietary blends
Badly, and predictably. A blend already hides individual quantities. A blend with no standardisation detail hides quantity and strength simultaneously, leaving you with a total weight for a mixture of unknown composition. There is no way to evaluate that, which is generally the point.
What to do with the answer
Treat standardisation as a gate rather than a tiebreaker. A standardised extract at a sensible amount from a named manufacturer is a product you can reason about. An unstandardised one is not — not because it is necessarily weak, but because nobody, including the people selling it, can tell you what is in it.