This page explains how the articles, guides, and service pages on actuatemedia.com get written, checked, and kept current — including where AI tools fit and where they don't. It applies to everything we publish here.
Who Writes Our Content
Every article carries a named author. Brad Holly, MBA, Partner at Actuate Media, is the reviewer of record: he reads every service page and every post before it publishes and signs off on the numbers in it. Where a post is credited to "the Actuate Media team," strategists on our staff wrote it and Brad reviewed it. We don't publish under "Staff Writer" or "Admin."
The people writing here run the accounts. That is the point of the blog: it is what a working agency has learned, not a content operation attached to one.
Research & Sources
Numbers come with a source. When an article says 58.5% of U.S. searches ended without a click, the link goes to the study that measured it, not to another blog that repeated it. We prefer primary sources — the platform's own documentation, the researcher who ran the study, the regulator's filing — and where the only available figure is a vendor's, we say so.
A source can change what it publishes after we cite it, and when that happens our article is wrong until we fix it. We re-check the statistics on a page whenever we review it and whenever a reader flags one.
First-Hand Data
Some of what we publish comes from our own accounts: Search Console and analytics for this site, and anonymized results from client accounts we manage. When a claim rests on that data we say so, give the date range, and keep the sample honest — two accounts is an anecdote, and we label it as one rather than dressing it up as a study.
Screenshots on this site come from real accounts, with identifying details removed. We do not present stock imagery or generated images as client work.
How We Use AI
We use AI tools in producing this content: to search and summarize sources, to draft outlines and first passes, to check readability, and to catch errors. We do not publish anything an AI drafted without a person on our team reading every sentence, checking every statistic against its source, and deciding it is true and worth your time.
The author named on the page is responsible for what it says. AI tools don't get bylines, and they don't get the final word. Two things we won't do: publish AI-generated pages at volume to chase rankings, or present AI-generated images or "screenshots" as real account data.
We disclose this here rather than on each post because the answer is the same on every page. A line that appears everywhere says less than a policy that explains the process.
Client Confidentiality
We never name a client without written consent. Results appear as vertical descriptors — "a regional personal-injury firm," "a DTC brand" — with the metric, the timeframe, and nothing that identifies the business. Where a case study carries a client's name, that client approved it.
Dates & Corrections
Every post shows a published date and a last-reviewed date. When we substantially rewrite a post, we say so in the body and keep the original publication date visible — our Search Console guide, rewritten in September 2026 after four years, is an example. When we correct a factual error, we fix the text and add a correction note at the end of the article. We don't quietly edit a wrong number into a right one.
Independence
Tools and vendors named in our articles are ones we use or have evaluated. We are a Google Ads Premier Partner and a Semrush Agency Partner; those relationships are disclosed here and don't change what we write about either company's products. When Google's own reporting falls short, we say so.
Report an Error
Found a mistake? Email hello@actuatemedia.com with the page URL and the sentence in question. We read every report, and we correct confirmed errors within five business days.