Judge every attached URL against the same sentence
A page supports the sentence only when one of its passages names the same subject and states the same claim (or the specific part of a compound sentence recorded beside it); a passage about the category alone is related only, and a passage about another subject or claim does not support it. For each attached URL, record the verdict alongside the exact supporting passage or an explicit note that none was located. Keep the frozen question, run, competitor sentence and citation attachment identical across rows so their judgements remain comparable without transferring evidence between pages. Once every row has a verdict, your team can directly correct missing, outdated or inaccurate facts about its own product on a page it controls; errors about those facts on third-party pages require a correction request backed by verifiable evidence.
Preserve the displayed citation markers and destinations before reviewing pages. If a source appears elsewhere in the answer but its attachment to this sentence is unclear, retain that uncertainty separately. Do not silently add it to the sentence’s source set.
The existing citation verification guide covers the underlying claim and passage checks. The extra requirement here is to apply those checks independently to every URL in the same citation group. A passage that supports the statement does not prove that the engine used that passage to generate the answer.
Work through a mixed-support example
Everything in this example is invented: the competitor, sentence, source addresses and page passages. These are placeholders, not observations of an actual answer or live pages.
Example sentence: *Competitor A provides appointment scheduling for service businesses.*
Suppose that sentence has three attached citations, A, B and C. Each row below belongs to the same question and illustrative run.
| Attached URL | Exact fictional page passage or absence note | Judgement for the example sentence |
|---|---|---|
A: competitor-a.example/product | “Competitor A provides appointment scheduling for service businesses.” | supports — the passage names the same subject and states the capability and use case. |
B: category-guide.example/scheduling | “Service businesses can use scheduling software to manage appointments.” No passage names Competitor A. | related only — the passage supplies category context without establishing the competitor’s capability. |
C: review-site.example/vendor-x | “Vendor X provides inventory tracking for retail shops.” No passage supports the stated claim about Competitor A. | does not support — the inspected page concerns another subject and capability. |
The resulting record keeps A, B and C visible together. A’s adequate evidence does not carry over to B or C, so the record does not mark all three as supporting. Nor does C invalidate the passage preserved for A.
If the sentence also claimed two-way calendar synchronisation, the example passage in A would support only the capability and use case. Record that supported span beside A; leave the calendar-synchronisation claim unresolved rather than extending the quotation’s meaning.
Keep missing evidence distinct from unreadable pages
An absence note should say what was inspected and what was not found. For B, the useful note is that the inspected page provides scheduling background but contains no passage about Competitor A. For C, preserve the inventory-tracking passage about Vendor X and note the absence of support for the target sentence.
An unreadable page needs a separate inspection status. If a page cannot be opened or the relevant text is inaccessible, leave its support judgement unassigned until inspection is possible. A failed opening attempt does not establish that the page lacks evidence.
Keep the sentence from the saved answer unchanged during this review. Replacing it with a narrower paraphrase halfway through would make the rows answer different questions.
Identify the gap in each citation row
If an attached page is under your team’s control and facts about your own product are missing, outdated or inaccurate where relevant to the sentence, correct those facts directly, retain the change record and re-test through the citation verification guide. If a third-party page misstates facts about your own product, record the disputed field and checkable evidence before proposing a correction. Use the website and third-party identity workflow only when the page confuses companies, domains or a product’s relationship to its operator. A field omitted by a third party is different from a false statement. A page marked supports that concerns only the competitor’s own capability is not a gap your team can correct: record it without acting on the competitor or another publisher’s page. For unreadable pages, complete the inspection status first; do not count them as evidence gaps.
The specific unsupported part of this sentence belongs beside its URL. In the example, B does not connect Competitor A to appointment scheduling; C concerns another subject and inventory tracking. A supplies support for appointment scheduling for service businesses.
These are evidence gaps in the observed citation group. They do not establish that your own website lacks the corresponding information; check whether your own pages state comparable facts separately. In this example none of the three rows calls for action on the competitor or another publisher’s page: A’s support concerns only the competitor’s capability, B and C leave the competitor sentence unsupported at their respective URLs, and none of the three passages states facts about your own product. In the follow-up action column added below, record each URL’s verdict and note that no action on the cited pages is called for; for B and C, include the exact unresolved statement.
Carry the rows into the existing records
Add columns for source type, who controls the page, follow-up action and re-test; use the workflows linked above for correction and repeat-observation steps.
The question-by-source matrix remains the broader record. These rows add the judgement for each attached URL within a particular competitor sentence.
Retain the individual verdicts, supporting passages and unresolved cells together with the observed answer. Proposed page changes remain separate from evidence of what a later answer actually says.
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