Methodology
How MAP documents the observable information environment around a URL or publisher — across seven dimensions, with no truth, bias, or credibility judgment.
MAP documents seven dimensions of observable information structure. There is no composite score and no pass/fail threshold — each record shows what was found for each dimension, plainly, including when a dimension has little or nothing to report. Publisher certification is a separate, staff-reviewed process (see below), not an automated calculation from these dimensions.
Origin
Publisher, author, and publish date, drawn from the page's metadata and structured data where available. MAP reports what's documented — not whether the source is reputable.
Attribution
Structural phrasing patterns associated with attributed claims ("according to," "officials state") and outbound references to named sources.
Specificity
Body content depth (word and paragraph counts), named dates, and name-like sequences suggesting people, places, or organizations.
Timing
Whether the headline and description structurally lean toward past, present/ongoing, or future/anticipated framing.
Framing
Structural presentation patterns — listicle, opinion, live-update, or standard format — and framing indicators like urgency or high-engagement phrasing.
Context change
When a URL has been analyzed before, MAP compares the new record against the most recent prior one — headline, attribution, reference count, and framing. Coverage is opportunistic: only URLs verified more than once have this dimension populated.
Information relationships
Outbound references to other domains, surfaced as clickable material — shown to demonstrate how the topic connects elsewhere, not to vouch for what's on the other end.
Intake
A URL is submitted for analysis — by a reader, via API, or through MAP's syndicated content pipeline.
Extraction
MAP's analysis engine fetches the page and extracts metadata, body content signals, and structural patterns — no external judgment inputs, no manual scoring.
Record assembly
The seven dimensions are assembled into plain-language sentences — each one traceable to something genuinely extracted, with gaps disclosed rather than papered over.
Ledger entry
The record is written to the MAP Verification Ledger as a SHA-256 hash-chained entry — permanent and append-only.
Publisher certification (separate process)
Certification is a distinct, staff-reviewed application process — not derived from any URL's context record. A certified publisher's business category and certification date are recorded on the same ledger and are publicly searchable.