Establish what the source actually changed
An unavailable link does not establish that its author withdrew a claim. Before rewriting an evidence page, identify the event and retain the wording that establishes it.
| Source event | What to record | Consequence for the evidence page |
|---|---|---|
| Explicit withdrawal or correction | Notice, date, affected statement and stated scope | Reassess conclusions supported by that statement |
| Temporary access failure | URL, retrieval time and observed failure | Record the access problem without describing it as a withdrawal |
| URL migration | Old and new locations, with evidence that the content is the same | Update the location; reassess the claim if the content also changed |
A correction may affect one figure, one population or the whole statement. Keep the source's limits intact. If the notice withdraws a particular result, do not infer that every unrelated statement on the page has been withdrawn. If its scope is unclear, identify the uncertainty and withhold the conclusion that depends on it until you have adequate support.
This procedure concerns an explicit change in the source's position. Routine checks for reachable links and supporting passages belong in citation source verification and updates.
Freeze the record before editing the current answer
Create a dated record of what readers previously saw. Store the exact quotation, nearby qualifications, source title, URL, source version or publication identifier, retrieval time and the evidence page's own version. Preserve the source's withdrawal notice separately so a later reviewer can distinguish the original support from the subsequent correction.
Do not reconstruct an unavailable original from memory. If a saved copy is incomplete, record that limitation. A partial screenshot may preserve a quoted sentence while omitting a footnote that narrowed it. Keep both the captured material and a description of what is missing.
Separate internal retention from public availability. Copyright, confidentiality or personal information may limit what you can publish. Where a full original cannot be public, show a permissible excerpt or a version summary, identify the earlier citation, and explain the access limit. The public history should not suggest that a restricted archive remains current evidence.
Trace the withdrawal through each dependent claim
Work from statements on your page, rather than treating a bibliography entry as the unit of correction. The following fields are an editorial record proposal.
- Give each affected statement a stable label and retain its previous wording, page section and supporting passage.
- Record the withdrawal notice's relevant wording and date. State whether it withdraws, replaces or narrows the support for this specific statement.
- Check the remaining evidence independently. Another citation supports the claim only if its own passage supports the same conclusion within the same scope.
- Assign a disposition: remove, narrow, replace with a newly supported statement, or retain with an explanation of why the withdrawal does not affect it.
- Save the replacement wording and decision reason. Include the editor, reviewer, affected page version and correction's effective time, expressed in Beijing time (UTC+08:00).
For a reusable record layout, adapt the claim and evidence pairing in a B2B technical answer evidence brief. Avoid preserving an unsupported recommendation merely because its underlying quotation has been moved to a footnote.
Publish a current answer and a readable history
Readers should encounter the corrected conclusion in the main answer. Add a visible correction near the affected section or the opening answer, depending on how widely the change affects the page. Record the previous statement, the change, the source's reason and the effective time. Distinguish the source's notice date from the time your correction became effective.
Link the correction to the withdrawal notice and the earlier page version where publication is permitted. Label the old version as superseded, identify its affected statements, and provide a route to the current answer. An archive label alone is insufficient if a reader can still mistake an old conclusion for current guidance. Do not leave the withdrawn support in the current evidence list without explaining its historical status.
Google Search Central's content guidance asks whether a page has easily verified factual errors. That supports checking the accuracy of the current answer; it does not prescribe the correction record proposed here. Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Schema.org defines citation as a reference to another creative work. Recording a reference does not establish that its claim remains supported, and the property is not a withdrawal protocol. Keep the explanation of the correction readable on the page, regardless of whether you also describe citations in structured data. Schema.org citation
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