Trust
What gets published, how it is checked, and how to get it changed
How Virtual Publicist decides what goes on the public industry map: public professional information only, every fact traceable to a source, nothing invented, a 90-day review window, and a removal route that is never argued with.
Where does the information on a profile come from?
From material the person or company publishes about their professional work — staff pages, mastheads, official profiles, submission pages, open calls — plus the categories and relationships we derive from those same documents. Each profile lists its sources. If a fact has no source we can point at, it does not go on the page.
The six rules
Applied to every record, with no exceptions for size or reputation.
- Step 1
Public professional information only
Records describe how someone works in the music industry: role, employer, beat, categories, locations, and links they publish themselves. We do not publish home addresses, personal phone numbers, private inboxes, or anything behind a login.
- Step 2
Sourced, or it does not ship
Every fact on a profile is traceable to a link on the page. Where a fact is unknown, the page leaves it out rather than estimating it.
- Step 3
Nothing is generated to fill a gap
We do not invent contact routes, follower counts, credits or quotes. A thin record is published as a short page, not padded into a long one.
- Step 4
No endorsement is implied
Appearing on the map means the work is public and useful to artists researching the industry. It does not mean the person has partnered with, been paid by, or approved of Virtual Publicist.
- Step 5
Reviewed on a 90-day window
Records are re-checked against their sources. A page only appears on Recently verified if a person confirmed it inside that window, and the review date is printed on the page.
- Step 6
Thin pages stay out of search
A record that fails the quality bar is set to noindex until it earns its place. Hubs stay out of the index until they hold enough real entries to be worth reading.
What we never publish
These are hard limits, not preferences.
- Private or personal contact details, including direct phone numbers and personal inboxes.
- Anything from a Virtual Publicist user's workspace: their artist profile, rankings, drafts or correspondence.
- Paid placement. No entry can be bought, and no ranking is for sale.
- Scraped content from behind a paywall or login.
- Opinions about a person's competence, reputation or behaviour.
How a page earns the index
Not everything we hold is worth putting in front of a search engine.
Every public page is scored on the same bar before it is allowed to be indexed: does it answer the question its title implies, does it carry stored facts rather than adjectives, does it cite sources, and does it connect to enough of the graph to be useful. A record that fails is still reachable — it is simply marked noindex until it is complete enough to be worth reading.
Generated hubs — a genre, a city, a role — stay out of the index until they hold at least 3 genuine entries. Sample and demonstration records never enter a sitemap at all, and are labelled as samples on the page.
Dates are never taken from the build clock. A page's last-updated date is the date its own public facts changed, so freshness on this site means something.
Being listed is not an endorsement
Stated plainly so nobody has to guess at the relationship.
A listing does not mean the person or company works with Virtual Publicist, has been paid by us, or has reviewed our product. Ranking inside the product is never for sale, and no entry can buy its way onto the map or higher up a result. Where a record has been confirmed by the person it describes, the page says so and shows the date.
We also do not publish judgements about anyone's competence or behaviour. The map describes what people work on, not how well they do it.
If something is wrong
One route, handled by a person.
Claims, corrections, removals and additions all go through the same form. Removals are actioned without requiring a reason. Corrections are checked against the sources on the page and the record's date is updated when it changes.
Claim, correct or remove a listing