Research standard

Getaway Brief Research Standard

Getaway Brief articles must not be treated as publishable just because the static page builds. Each article needs two kinds of backing before launch.

1. Demand / SEO backing

For every target article, record evidence that people plausibly search for the topic.

Minimum acceptable pre-launch evidence:

• Primary keyword appears in search autocomplete, People Also Ask, competitor titles, or SEO tool data.
• At least 2–3 current competing pages or forum/community results exist for the topic.
• The query has clear intent that can map to an affiliate action: hotels, cabins, tours, rentals, insurance, gear, or transportation.

Preferred evidence:

• Keyword volume/difficulty from an SEO tool.
• Google Search Console impressions after launch.
• Ranking/click data once pages are indexed.

2. Factual / utility backing

For every article, verify concrete claims before publishing:

• Drive times or transit access.
• Pet policies, shuttle availability, attraction hours, park rules, seasonal closures.
• Whether a destination really fits the stated traveler constraint.
• Lodging/booking angle: hotels, cabins, vacation rentals, tours, cars, etc.

Use official sources where possible:

• city/tourism bureau pages
• park/transportation authority pages
• attraction pages
• hotel/affiliate inventory pages

Secondary sources are useful for demand validation, not final factual authority:

• competitor listicles
• BringFido
• Reddit/forum discussions
• travel blogs
• review platforms

Source-note metadata

Every factual source_notes entry should now carry conservative review metadata:

• source_role: normally factual_support; demand-only sources belong in demand_evidence, not source_notes.
• verification_scope: what kind of claim the source supports, such as transit/schedule, venue/attraction, park rules, pet policy, weather/climate, or destination/lodging-area context.
• recency_risk: whether the source must be reopened before representative-page use. Most schedules, attraction hours, tickets, pet rules, park alerts, and weather/climate claims are high-risk even when the URL is reachable.

These fields do not make an article publishable; they make the final manual review queue more precise.

Article status labels

Use these internally:

• idea: keyword/topic only
• draft: content exists, not verified
• researched: demand and factual source notes captured
• publish_candidate: edited, sourced, internally linked, affiliate slots reasonable
• published: live public URL exists

Launch rule

Do not present an article as final/publishable until it has researched or better status. Draft pages may exist locally as scaffolding, but the public site should only launch with pages that have evidence notes and fact checks.