VisibilityTrace separates two concepts that most "best tools" content blurs together: the date a claim was observed in a vendor's public source, and the date the page that carries that claim was last reviewed. This page describes how both dates are set, what triggers a refresh, and how corrections are handled.
The two dates that matter
"Observed YYYY-MM-DD" on individual claims
Whenever a specific number — a price, a credit allowance, a model list, a plan tier — is taken from a vendor's public page, the page records the date that source page was read. The phrase used is "observed YYYY-MM-DD". That date is a statement about a specific URL on a specific day, not about the page as a whole.
"Observed" does not mean "verified by VisibilityTrace as still true at the moment you are reading this." Vendors change pricing pages without notice. The observed date lets a reader judge how fresh the cited figure is and decide whether to check the vendor page directly before relying on it.
"Last reviewed" on the page header
Every page on VisibilityTrace displays a Last reviewed date in its header. That date marks the most recent operator-approved pass over the page's source material and its body copy. It is updated when:
- A source page cited on this page has changed materially since the last review, and the citation has been re-verified.
- A new vendor or product enters the category and warrants inclusion in a buyer guide or comparison.
- An error has been reported and corrected.
- A scheduled review pass has been completed, even if no changes were required.
Review cadence by evidence label
The five evidence labels described on the methodology page carry different freshness expectations.
Deep Research buyer guide
Refreshed on a quarterly cadence at minimum. A new Deep Research pass is triggered earlier if at least one of the following happens: a covered vendor publishes a major release or restructures its pricing; a new vendor enters the category with documented technical methodology; or an independent third-party study (academic preprint, controlled empirical comparison) is published that materially changes the conclusions of the guide.
Public information review
Refreshed when the underlying vendor source pages change materially. The trigger is concrete: a pricing change, a model-list change, a tier rename, a terms-of-service revision, or a public statement of partnership the page previously did not reflect. Minor copy edits to vendor sites do not trigger a refresh.
Methodology-based comparison and operational methodology
Reviewed quarterly. These pages depend on operational practice and on industry-wide standards (robots.txt rules, llms.txt evolution, AI crawler user-agent registrations) that move on a slower clock than vendor pricing.
Policy and trust pages
Reviewed when the underlying practice changes: a new affiliate partner is added, a partner is paused, the public source approval process changes, or this update policy itself is revised.
What can change between reviews
A page can become out of date before its next scheduled review. Realistic sources of drift between reviews include:
- Vendor pricing changes — particularly for tools whose pricing pages move on a monthly cycle.
- Plan tier renames, credit allowance changes, or quota changes that leave the headline price the same but change what it buys.
- Model list changes — vendors add or drop AI engines as upstream providers change rate limits or terms.
- Terms-of-service revisions that affect data ownership, scraping permissions, or refund policy.
VisibilityTrace does not commit to real-time accuracy of any vendor figure. The "observed" date on each claim is the honest scope of what VisibilityTrace can promise about that figure.
How corrections are handled
A correction is any change to a page that fixes a factual error or removes an out-of-date claim. The process is:
- The reported error is checked against the cited public source and, if needed, against the vendor's current public source page.
- If the error is confirmed, the page is updated, the "last reviewed" date is advanced, and a short correction note is appended to the bottom of the affected page describing what changed and when.
- If the original cited source was correct at the observed date but the vendor has since changed it, the page is updated and the new observed date is recorded. No correction note is required because no original claim was wrong.
How to report something
The most reliable way to surface an error is to identify the page URL, the specific sentence or table cell at issue, and — where possible — the current vendor source page that contradicts the VisibilityTrace claim. With that information, confirming the report is a matter of comparing two URLs.