Editorial policy

Who writes

Pages on www.onesearch.bio are written by the OneSearch research desk. That is an editorial function inside the product team. It is not a newsroom, not a freelance beat, and not a consumer reporting agency. The byline under long articles — “OneSearch research desk · Last reviewed” plus a date — means a person on that desk is accountable for the sentences on the page. It does not mean a journalist profiled a private individual.

We write about how to research people on the public web, how to confirm the right person when names collide, and where this product must not be used. We write audience pages for recruiting, founders, sales, and research because those are the jobs we built the brief for. We write comparisons so a buyer can tell a sourced brief from LinkedIn, Google, Apollo, or a people directory. We write help and legal-use pages so a team can find the stop line without reading a two-thousand-word method first.

We do not write consumer reports. We do not write secret dossiers. We do not invent usage statistics. If a page reads like a ranking we paid for, it should not ship. The contact for this desk is team@onesearch.bio.

What we publish

This site is product documentation and research method, published so the confirm-first workflow is inspectable. A method page should be runnable without the product. An audience page should name the ticket, the confirm gate, and the eligibility stop. A comparison should say when the other tool wins. A policy page should stay short and point at the method when the method is long.

We will not claim OneSearch is FCRA-compliant. We will not claim it replaces a background check. The classification method lives on people search is not a background check. The short policy lives on FCRA and legal use. If those two pages ever disagree, the help page is the product rule and the guide is the working method — email the desk and we will align them.

Review cadence

Legal-adjacent pages — anything that mentions FCRA, hiring, tenant, credit, insurance, consumer reports, or eligibility — are reviewed before first publish and again whenever a statute we cite, an FTC resource we link, or our product scope changes. Method pages are reviewed when the product workflow changes: the confirm step, the brief shape, how sources display, or a new audience we claim to serve.

Cadence in practice: the research desk re-reads legal-adjacent pages at least when the FCRA help page or the FCRA guide changes, and at least once a year if neither has moved. Method and audience pages are re-read when we change the lookup, the confirm UI, or the “not a background check” copy in the product. We do not run a keyword refresh. A review means a human opened the page, clicked the outbound cites, and checked that the H1 still matches the job.

Pages we treat as legal-adjacent today include FCRA and legal use, people search is not a background check, people search for recruiting, the “what we are not” section on About OneSearch, and this editorial policy. If we add a page that tells someone how to use a brief in a hiring packet, it joins that list before it ships.

Last-reviewed dates

Long articles show a last-reviewed date under the title. That date is when a person on the research desk last read the page against the current product and the current FCRA one-liner. It is not a sitemap trick and it is not “this still ranks.” If you are using a method page as an internal playbook and the date is older than a product change you can see in the app, treat the page as pending review and email team@onesearch.bio.

We would rather show an honest older date than silently bump a timestamp. A date that moves without a sentence changing is a bug. A sentence that changes on a legal-adjacent page without a date move is also a bug. Tell us.

What we refuse

Refusal is part of the job, not a footer. The research desk will not publish the following, even if a draft would rank or a comparison table would look cleaner without the loss column.

• Fake usage statistics or “#1 people search” scorecards we invented.
• Celebrity look-up bait as if it were a method. Worked identities here are common-name collisions — Alex Chen, Maria Garcia, and other ordinary names — because the hard problem is disambiguation, not fame.
• Instructions to bypass logins, scrape private data, harass someone, or assemble a secret file.
• Comparisons that pretend we win every job. We do not replace LinkedIn messaging, Apollo email waterfalls, Google’s index, or a consumer reporting agency.
• Any claim that OneSearch is FCRA-compliant or that a public-web brief is a background check.
• H1s or slugs that clone another product’s “find anyone by name” language. If a title cannot say confirm-first public-web brief, it does not publish.
• Invented legal advice. We point at the FCRA help page, the FCRA guide, and official FTC material. Specific facts need counsel, not a search box.

Corrections

If a method page is wrong — a broken cite, a step that no longer matches the product, a sentence that overclaims — email team@onesearch.bio with the URL and the sentence. We acknowledge within two business days.

Once we confirm a factual error on a method or audience page, we correct it or add a visible note within five business days. Once we confirm an error on a legal-adjacent page, we qualify or remove the sentence the same business day, then rewrite. If we got a comparison wrong about another product, the same SLA applies. We will not “win” a cell in a table by ignoring a job the other tool actually does.

That SLA is for our published method and policy. It is not a promise about search results or a person’s public web footprint. Those requests use a different queue.

FCRA and legal-use pages

Two pages carry the stop line, on purpose, at two lengths. FCRA and legal use is the short product policy: OneSearch is not a consumer reporting agency, is not FCRA-compliant, and must not be used for hiring, tenant, credit, or insurance eligibility. People search is not a background check is the working method: how to classify a ticket, where conversation prep ends, and what teams get wrong when they paste a brief into an eligibility file.

We do not duplicate the method onto the help page, and we do not hide the policy inside the guide. If you only need the rule, use help. If you need to walk a teammate through the line, use the guide. Neither page is legal advice.

Opt out is a different queue

If you want a public page about you reviewed or removed from OneSearch results, use opt out. Do not send an opt-out to the editorial inbox and expect the results pipeline to notice; the remove-me form is the queue. Corrections to our method, comparison, and policy pages stay on team@onesearch.bio.

How this desk relates to the company page: About OneSearch is mission, method, and data ethics. This page is how the sentences get written, reviewed, and taken down. If they diverge, email the desk.