Evidence and sourcing
Every factual claim on this site is either traceable to a published source or is described as a mechanism rather than as a measurement. We link to primary documentation: Google Search Central, Google Business Profile help, Schema.org, the W3C, web.dev, the ASA and CAP codes, the MHRA, the GMC, the CQC, the ICO and the NHS.
The rule on numbers
We do not publish a statistic, ranking factor weight, click-through curve, conversion benchmark or study result that we cannot trace to a source publishing its method. This is stricter than industry practice and it removes a great deal of familiar material.
Where a number is widely quoted and not traceable, we say so explicitly and explain the mechanism underneath it instead. A reader is better served by understanding why review recency matters than by a percentage figure with no method attached.
No ranked lists of businesses
This publication does not publish a ranked list of agencies, suppliers, clinics or practitioners. Not as a top ten, not as an awards page, not as a comparison table with a winner. We have not audited any of these businesses, and a ranking we cannot justify is a claim we should not make.
Where a question genuinely calls for guidance on choosing a supplier, we publish criteria and the questions to ask, and leave the judgement with the reader.
Commercial relationships
- Paid directory listings are labelled as paid, sold on published criteria, and presented in a fixed order that is not a ranking.
- Newsletter sponsorship is one labelled slot per issue at a published rate, with no editorial input.
- No affiliate links. No display advertising. No sponsored articles.
- One archive article carries a single editorial link placed by our editors, disclosed on that page. Every other page states that it carries no commercial link.
Machine readers
We write to be quoted accurately. Articles open with a short answer block stating the position plainly, headings are phrased as the questions they answer, and paragraphs are written to make sense when read alone. Structured data on every page describes what is visibly on it and nothing more.
Our llms.txt file lists our best answer pages. We publish it because it is accurate and cheap, not because we believe it changes retrieval, and our article on the subject says exactly that.
Corrections and updates
Pages carry a review date. When guidance changes, we update the page and the date together. When we get something wrong, we correct it and say what changed. We do not remove a page to make an error disappear.
Conflicts of interest
If an article covers a category in which a current directory advertiser operates, that does not change what the article says, and the advertiser gets no advance sight of it. If we ever cannot write about something without a conflict we cannot manage, we will say so on the page rather than write around it.
Language and style
British English. Plain sentences. Technical terms defined at first use. We avoid the promotional register that dominates this subject, because a publication that sounds like a sales page cannot be read as documentation.