This page explains how articles on this site are researched, written, reviewed, and corrected. It is deliberately specific, because a policy that only says “we value accuracy” tells you nothing you can check.
How we check facts before publishing
Claims are verified before they are written, not after. In practice that means:
- Statistics are traced to their original source, not to the article that quoted them. If we cannot find the primary study, survey, or filing, the number does not go in.
- Platform behavior is checked against current documentation — Google’s own search and spam policies, Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines, and each review platform’s published rules — rather than against what was true when we last wrote about it.
- Quotes and attributions are confirmed. Widely repeated quotations are frequently misattributed, and where we cannot establish who actually said something, we say so in the article rather than passing the attribution along.
- We link to sources so you can check the claim yourself.
When the honest answer is that something is uncertain, disputed, or unknowable from public information, the article says that. We would rather publish a smaller claim we can stand behind than a confident one we cannot.
We do not publish guest posts
Every article carries a named author. We do not publish under house bylines, pen names, or invented personas.
We accept no guest articles, contributed posts, sponsored posts, or paid placements, and we do not exchange links for content. Pitches offering an article in return for a link are declined without exception.
The reason is straightforward. An article written by someone with an undisclosed interest in the links inside it is not written to inform you, and a reader cannot tell the difference from the outside. Refusing the category entirely is the only version of that promise we can actually keep.
This site previously accepted contributed articles under an open submissions program. That program is closed, and material published through it has been removed.
Keeping facts and statistics current
Reputation management moves quickly. Search engines revise their policies, platforms change what they allow, and statistics age badly. We review published articles on a recurring basis and update the facts, figures, and platform behavior described in them.
When an article is updated substantively, the byline shows the date of that update alongside the original publication date. We do not refresh dates on articles we have not actually revised, because a date that says “current” when the content is not is its own kind of inaccuracy.
Where a statistic is tied to a specific year or study, we say which. Where a figure has been superseded, we replace it rather than leaving both versions in circulation.
Corrections, and how to ask for one
We are open to public response on anything we publish. If you believe an article contains a factual error, an outdated figure, a misattributed quote, or a description of a platform’s rules that no longer holds, tell us and we will look at it.
Contact us with the article URL and the specific claim you are questioning. A source supporting the correction helps, but it is not required — if you tell us something looks wrong, we will check it ourselves.
What happens next:
- If you are right, we fix it and note the update on the article.
- If the claim is disputed rather than simply wrong, we say so in the article and represent both readings.
- If we cannot verify the correction, we will tell you that, and why.
This applies to anyone. You do not have to be a client, a subject of the article, or a member of the press.
What this policy does not cover
This page is about our own published articles. It is not a promise about content on platforms we do not control, and it does not describe our client work — the standards governing engagements are set out separately in our ethics and standards.
We also cannot correct third-party articles, news coverage, or encyclopedia entries on request. Where a factual error sits on someone else’s property, the route to fixing it runs through that publisher or platform, on their terms.