How we source, quote, and correct

For rules and statistics we cite the organization that published them. For Google's rules that means Google's own help center and Search Central documentation. For how AI crawlers work it means the crawler documentation that OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google publish. For consumer research it means the publisher of the survey, such as BrightLocal or SOCi, with the scope of the finding stated the way they stated it. Where we cite a practitioner's view, such as one publisher's list of suggested Business Profile categories or a vendor's pricing survey, we name the publisher and present it as that publisher's view, not as a rule. Each source appears as a link in the sentence that uses it and again in the source list at the end of the page.

When a number comes from a forecast rather than a measurement, we say so and give the date it was made. A 2024 prediction about 2026 stays labeled as a 2024 prediction.

If a sentence on this site sits inside quotation marks and is attributed to Google, a vendor, or a researcher, those are the source's own words, copied from the page we link. When we explain what a source says in our own words, we do not use quotation marks. We also do not attach a source's name to our own opinion.

• Client case studies, client names, or client results. None are published today, and we will not describe outcomes we cannot document.
• Statistics without a traceable primary source, including widely repeated figures whose original study does not say what the repetition claims.
• Promises about rankings, timelines, or AI citations. No one controls how Google or an AI assistant ranks a business, and we do not pretend to.
• Claims that a file or markup type, by itself, makes an AI system recommend a business. Google states there is "no special schema.org structured data that you need to add" to appear in its AI features, and we write accordingly.

Before a page is published it is checked against a written evidence ledger: every specific fact on the page has to map to a source and a verbatim quote. A second reviewer then reads the page for accuracy and for problems the ledger cannot catch, such as a source that is real but does not support the sentence. Our methodology page explains the same standard as it applies to the free audit.

Each guide, glossary entry, and service detail page shows the date it was published and, when it changes, the date of the last substantive update. Search engine and AI products change often, so we revisit guides when the underlying documentation changes rather than on a fixed calendar.

If you find an error, tell us through the contact form with the page and the correction. When we fix a factual error we update the page and its updated date.