Publication standards
Editorial research and lookup output stay separate
Surname Time Machine contains two different kinds of material: independently scoped editorial explanations and a transient output from a Census-data lookup tool. This policy explains how each is produced, which material has a public URL, and where advertising may eventually appear.
Two content classes
The editorial library contains guides whose questions are selected individually. Each guide has a defined purpose, a source list, a publication date, and prose written to answer that particular question. Editorial pages explain methods, show readers how to evaluate evidence, and distinguish supported conclusions from tempting overstatements.
The surname lookup is a software tool. After a visitor submits a surname with a POST request, it applies one tested presentation to a record in an immutable Census snapshot and returns that output inside the canonical homepage. The output is useful for inspecting a record, but it has no separate public profile URL and is not represented as a commissioned article.
How editorial material is reviewed
Quantitative and methodological statements must trace to the registered U.S. Census Bureau files or methodology documents shown on the page. Draft copy is checked for the distinctions that govern the product: rank is not count, absence is not zero, 1990 provides no national count, and the disclosure-protected 2020 product requires its own explanation.
Editorial work must also pass structural checks before release. The repository verifies minimum depth, source references, unique titles and descriptions, and excessive phrase overlap between guides. Those tests are guardrails rather than a substitute for judgment. A guide can still be withheld when its claim is technically valid but repetitive, confusing, or unsupported by the available evidence.
How transient surname results are treated
The on-page result is assembled from typed observations in the locked snapshot. It preserves publication status and source semantics, leaves gaps visible, and avoids inferred ancestry or causes of change. Search input is normalized only for lookup, is submitted by POST, stays out of the page URL, and is not sent to analytics as a raw surname.
The site no longer publishes generated surname profiles, alphabetical catalogs, comparisons, or share cards. Their former URL families return HTTP 410 Gone with a crawler directive and without a canonical tag or advertising code. A future public surname page would require substantial surname-specific editorial work, a recorded impact review, and new owner authorization.
Indexing rules
The public sitemap contains the homepage, research guides, methodology, data-source documentation, privacy information, this policy, and the project's about page. The private POST lookup does not create another sitemap entry. Retired search, compare, share, surname-profile, and alphabetical-catalog URL families return HTTP 410. Preview deployments remain blocked from indexing regardless of route.
Indexing is not treated as a reward for having a URL. A page enters the sitemap only when its visible content has a stable canonical address, a clear editorial purpose, source support, useful server-rendered text, and no unresolved quality flag. Large route cohorts require a new impact review and recorded decision before publication.
Advertising boundary
The site currently publishes an AdSense ownership declaration but does not load an AdSense runtime script, request ads, or set advertising cookies. Approval, if granted, would not automatically authorize ads across every route. Consent, privacy, placement, and accessibility requirements remain a separate implementation decision.
Any future ad runtime is fail-closed to individual research-guide articles, methodology, and data-source documentation. It is prohibited on the homepage lookup and its result, the guide hub, retired generated routes, privacy and correction pages, or other screens whose main purpose is navigation or tool output. That boundary is enforced in code and tests so a general layout change cannot silently expand advertising inventory.
Corrections and accountability
Possible errors can be reported through the contact information on the About page. A useful report identifies the URL, the disputed wording or value, the relevant Census vintage, and the official evidence supporting a correction. Source updates create a new reviewed snapshot rather than silently rewriting the recorded inputs.
Material changes to sources, formulas, privacy, index classes, or advertising require an architecture decision record, regression tests, deployment evidence, and an explicit release decision. The goal is not to promise that every interpretation is final. It is to make the evidence, limits, and correction path visible enough that a reader can check the work.