Start with the claim
Review the sentence before choosing the source.
These claim categories need evidence that directly supports them:
- Product behavior
- Legal requirements
- Medical guidance
- Market size
- Pricing
- Technical limits
If the claim is broad or vague, make it more specific before sourcing. It is easier to verify a precise statement than a sweeping one.
Prefer primary sources
Primary sources include official documentation, standards bodies, research papers, government sources, company documentation, and first-party data.
Secondary sources can help explain context, but they should not carry risky claims alone. Use them carefully and check whether they cite stronger original sources.
Check recency and fit
There is no fixed shelf life for a source — recency depends on the claim. Fast-moving facts like platform features, laws, pricing, market data, and AI-search behavior should be checked against current sources before publishing; a stable definition can still cite an older one.
Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines set no maximum source age, but they treat outdated information as a quality problem — especially for "your money or your life" topics like health, finance, and legal. Keep time-sensitive claims current rather than chasing a specific date cutoff.
Match the source to the claim type
Use official documentation for platform behavior, government or regulator sources for legal and public data, research papers for scientific claims, and company sources for product-specific facts.
For examples and practical guidance, a source may support context rather than prove a statistic, but the article should make that role clear.
Avoid citation decoration
A link after a sentence does not automatically make the sentence reliable. The source must support the exact claim in the article.
- Decorative: a citation linked to a general company page that never mentions the specific point in the sentence.
- Supporting: a citation linked to the exact page, table, or paragraph that states the claim.
If the source only partially supports the claim, rewrite the claim so it matches the evidence.
Show source work in the handoff
For SEO production, the final handoff should identify:
- Sources used
- Claims changed
- Any statements that still require client approval
This helps reviewers see that fact checking happened before the article entered the CMS.
Next step
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