Editorial Policy

How article pages are built

GlyphSignal article pages combine sourced reference material with original context. The original layer includes ranking context, recent view history, topical grouping, an editorial explanation of why the topic is trending, and cross-platform correlation when available (Reddit, Hacker News, YouTube, GitHub, Google Trends).

Every article page links back to the original source. When a page is thin, list-like, or overly source-dependent, we remove it from the index rather than asking Google to rank it. We would rather have fewer indexable pages of higher quality than many thin ones.

What is original vs sourced

Original GlyphSignal content includes the trend explanation ("why is this trending now"), category context, historical view comparisons, key takeaways distilled from source material, trust and disclosure elements, related topic paths, and on-page interpretation of public traffic data.

Sourced material — Wikipedia extracts, Reddit post titles, YouTube metadata, pageview statistics — is clearly labelled and attributed to its origin with a visible link. We never rewrite sourced copy to appear original.

Fact-checking process

For trending topic pages, facts are inherited from the underlying Wikipedia source with attribution. When our editorial layer adds claims beyond the source — such as trend explanations, historical comparisons, or category framing — we constrain those claims to what is derivable from data we have directly ingested (pageview history, post counts, engagement scores) or from on-source verification.

For evergreen guides, facts are checked against official provider or government documentation at publication and on each scheduled review. Pricing, policy, or regulation details that change frequently link to the authoritative source rather than being stated as fixed values.

If a claim on any page cannot be traced back to a verifiable source, we remove it.

Update cadence

Different content types refresh at different rates. Our current schedule:

• Homepage, /today, /signal, /pulse — regenerated daily from the latest available Wikimedia and cross-platform data.
• Per-article trend pages — view history refreshes daily; editorial framing is stable until the underlying source changes materially.
• Market signals — price and indicator data refresh every 1–24 hours depending on source availability.
• Guides — reviewed on a rolling basis at least annually, with immediate updates when referenced facts change or a reader flags an issue.
• Policy and trust pages (this page, legal, about, contact) — reviewed whenever policy changes and at least twice a year. The "reviewed on" date at the top of each page reflects the last substantive review.

When Wikimedia's pageview API runs behind its usual 24-hour lag, listing pages show a small "data is N days behind" notice at the top so readers are not misled about freshness.

Guide review policy

Guides are independently written, reviewed, and refreshed when facts or market conditions change. Pricing-heavy and compliance-heavy sections defer to official provider or government sources when exact values are likely to drift. Each guide surfaces its last editorial review date on the page.

When a guide recommends third-party products or services, the recommendation reflects editorial judgment on quality and fit, not paid placement. Any commercial relationship that influences a recommendation would be disclosed in the guide itself and in our advertising disclosure.

Sensitive content handling

We remove ads and apply noindex to unsafe or highly sensitive topics: explicit adult content, graphic violence, tragedies where ranking could feel exploitative, or content that could cause harm if miscontextualised. We also noindex weak list pages, disambiguation-like pages, and other surfaces that do not add enough unique value.

Safety classification runs at the ingestion step. If a page that should have been filtered slipped through, please use the corrections process to flag it — we treat safety-classification errors as high-priority.

Indexing policy

We index a deliberately narrow set of page types: the homepage, /today, /pulse, /signal, guides, editorial and policy pages, and the strongest English article detail pages (those that pass quality gates for extract length, description quality, and originality of the editorial layer).

Weak utility pages, most non-English article detail pages, listing-of-listings pages, and per-date archive pages are available to users but are not submitted for indexing. This is a quality decision, not a bandwidth decision: we would rather Google index 200 of our strongest pages well than 20,000 pages of mixed quality.

Editorial independence and ads

Ads do not determine coverage, rankings, or editorial conclusions. Which articles surface, how they are ranked, and how they are framed is decided by our ingestion and editorial pipelines; the advertising layer is entirely separate and plays no role in those decisions.

We display ads from third-party networks (see our advertising disclosure). We do not select individual ads, and neither we nor any advertiser can pay to have a story added, removed, promoted, or demoted. Trust and policy pages (this page, about, legal, contact) do not carry ad code.

Corrections and response times

If you spot a factual problem, attribution problem, or content safety issue, email [email protected] or use our contact page. We target:

• High-stakes factual errors (safety, medical, financial, legal) — acknowledged within 24 hours, corrected within 48 hours.
• Attribution and source-linking errors — acknowledged within two business days, corrected on the next editorial pass.
• Style, framing, or interpretation concerns — reviewed within five business days.

When we make a substantive correction we note the revision date on the affected page.

Authorship and accountability

GlyphSignal is produced by a small editorial and engineering team. Data-derived pages (trend explanations, category context, cross-platform correlation) are generated from our editorial pipeline using documented rules rather than per-article bylines. Guides and long-form editorial pieces are attributed to the team and reviewed by at least one editor before publication.

The person responsible for editorial decisions and corrections at GlyphSignal is contactable at [email protected]. We publicly acknowledge significant corrections and retractions.