Editorial policy

How we choose topics

Topics come from measured search demand rather than from opinion. We read the queries that already bring people to this site in Google Search Console, and we write about the questions those queries ask. If a subject has no measurable demand and no first-hand data of ours behind it, we do not publish an article about it.

How we research and cite

Every factual claim carries a link, and the link sits on the sentence that makes the claim rather than in a list at the end. We prefer primary sources: a company’s own documentation, a regulator, a published study. Where we rely on a vendor’s research we say so, because a study run by a company selling the tool it measures is evidence with an interest.

Sources are no older than twelve months, except for reference documentation that is continuously updated. If we cannot find a source for a number, we leave the number out and say that it is unpublished, instead of repeating a figure nobody stands behind.

Our own measurements

Articles include data we measured ourselves — our search performance, our usage, our own product’s configuration. Each of those figures is labelled with the tool that produced it and the period it covers, so it can be checked against the same source. We do not round our own numbers in a flattering direction, and we publish the unflattering ones: the first article on this blog exists because our previous section earned one click in sixteen months.

How an article is checked

Nothing is published that nobody has read. Before an article goes live, a person goes through it sentence by sentence against the sources linked on those sentences, and every figure taken from our own data is verified against the tool that produced it.

An article that adds nothing to what is already published elsewhere is not worth your time or ours, so we do not publish one. The test we apply is whether it contains something you cannot get from the other results on the same query — usually a measurement of ours, and always a source you can open yourself.

Who reviews, and what blocks publication

Every article is signed by a named person who is accountable for it, and that byline links to a page saying who they are. We do not use invented authors or pen names.

Some of this is enforced by the publishing tool rather than by memory. An article cannot be published while it has no named author, while a figure in it has neither a source link nor a reference to one of our own measurements, while any source is older than twelve months, or while it carries no table and no measurement of our own.

Updates and corrections

Articles are updated when the facts change, and the update date shown on the article is the date of that change. Substantive corrections are stated in the article rather than made silently.

If you find an error, tell us through the contact page. Point at the sentence and, where you can, at the source that contradicts it — that is the fastest way to get it fixed.

Commercial relationships

The blog is published by n33.ai and writes about the market this product competes in, including our own service. Where an article mentions what we offer, it says so plainly and links to the page, so you can tell a product claim from a measured one.

Paid or sponsored content, if we publish any, is labelled as paid. We do not present it as independent editorial work.

What we do not do

We do not invent authors, fabricate statistics, publish screenshots of data we did not collect, or restate another site’s article as our own. We do not publish a burst of articles to fill a section: writing less often is the cost of every article carrying sources and a signature.