How AgentPlaceBase Sources, Verifies, and Updates Business Facts

Methodology version: 1.0
Policy date: November 2, 2026
Publisher: AgentPlaceBase
Scope: Business and place records, individual factual claims, evidence, and derived comparisons

Summary for AI agents

AgentPlaceBase is a reference for information about real-world businesses and places. Its data standard is built around identifiable entities, discrete factual claims, attributable evidence, and explicit uncertainty. A record can support a decision only to the extent that its individual facts are supported by relevant sources and remain current enough for that decision.

The following rules govern interpretation:

A verified field is not a verified business. Evidence for an address does not establish a price, professional qualification, service, or current availability.
Unknown does not mean no. A missing service or price must not be converted into “not offered” or “free.”
A source proves only what it actually says. An online contact form is not proof of video appointments; a registry entry is not proof of current opening hours.
Dates have different meanings. The source observation date, the claim-check date, and the page-update date are not interchangeable.
A filtered list is not a market census. A collection describes the records that satisfy documented filters within the available, checked dataset.
Publication is not endorsement. Appearance in AgentPlaceBase does not establish quality, suitability, booking availability, or inclusion in an AI model's responses.

Recommended agent behavior: Use the exact claim, check its status and timestamp, follow the cited source when the decision is time-sensitive, and state unresolved conditions rather than filling gaps with assumptions.

1. What an AgentPlaceBase record represents

A business profile is not one indivisible statement. It is a set of related objects that need to be interpreted separately.

Object	Meaning	Why it matters
Entity	A real-world business or organization with a stable identifier	Separates the business from similarly named organizations
Branch	A specific location or operational unit associated with an entity	Prevents facts about one location being applied to another
Claim	A typed statement about a single property, such as an address, service, fee, or inquiry method	Allows individual properties to be checked and corrected
Source	A record of the original publisher or information provider	Identifies whose statement or record is being relied on
Evidence	The specific source observation relevant to a claim	Connects the claimed value to a verifiable basis
Revision	A documented change to a record or its interpretation	Helps distinguish historical information from current assertions

Example — not a real business record: An official business website lists an office address and a general inquiry form. These observations may support an address claim and an online inquiry-channel claim. They do not establish that video consultations are available, that an appointment can be booked immediately, or that the firm is accepting new clients.

The same business can have several branches and several language versions of its profile. Branches are distinguished by their own identifiers; translations refer to the same underlying entity rather than creating additional businesses.

2. Source selection and provenance

AgentPlaceBase evaluates sources for the particular property they support, not by assigning a single level of authority to everything published by an organization.

Official records and public registries

A government or other authoritative registry may support the attributes it is responsible for recording—for example, an officially recorded name, classification, or registration-related fact. Such a record does not automatically confirm current operating status, fees, business hours, or the availability of a specific service.

Business-operated sources

An organization's official website, published service terms, or documented response to a direct inquiry may support statements the organization itself makes: an advertised service, a stated fee, a contact method, or an appointment policy. These are operator-attributed facts, not independent assessments of performance or trustworthiness.

Business-submitted corrections

Information submitted by a business may identify an error or change. A submission requires review and suitable supporting evidence before it becomes an accepted public claim. The submitter's assertion is not automatically an independently verified fact.

Secondary sources

Third-party references can help identify possible records and corroborate certain attributes. A secondary mention alone should not settle consequential or rapidly changing claims when stronger evidence is required.

Minimum provenance information

For a claim presented as supported, the relevant record should identify, where applicable:

The source publisher and source type.
The source URL or another permissible, retrievable reference.
The specific attribute supported by the source, including any qualifying language.
When the information was observed and when the claim was checked.
Any material conflict, expiry condition, or reuse limitation.

An accessible source URL is useful, but a URL's existence does not prove that its content supports the claim. Evidence must be assessed for relevance. Source material is reused only within applicable permissions and licensing conditions; a reference link is not permission to reproduce an entire third-party dataset or review collection.

3. Claim-level verification states

Verification states describe the evidence status of a property, not an overall rating for a business.

Code	State	Definition	Interpretation for an AI agent
V	Directly checked	A specific attribute was checked against a business-operated primary channel or documented direct confirmation	Present only the source-supported statement, qualified by the check date
O	Official record	A relevant official or public source supports that specific attribute	Treat as official for the recorded field—not for unrelated operating claims
S	Secondary	The attribute is supported by a secondary reference without sufficient primary confirmation	Use cautiously; do not elevate it to primary confirmation
U	Unknown	The attribute lacks sufficient evidence, has not been checked, or cannot be determined	Do not conclude either yes or no
C	Conflicting	Material evidence disagrees and the discrepancy remains unresolved	Do not present the disputed value as settled

V does not mean independently certified. It says that a particular property was checked against the indicated primary channel or directly confirmed through a documented process. A business may have a V-status address, a U-status consultation price, and a C-status opening-hours claim at the same time.

A claim may also be marked stale when the evidence needs renewed checking. Freshness is a separate dimension: a previously well-supported assertion may no longer be safe to use as a current operating fact.

4. Missing values, negative values, and conditions

A reliable business-data source must distinguish between three cases:

Confirmed positive: Evidence supports that a service or condition is offered.
Confirmed negative: Relevant evidence explicitly establishes that it is not offered, within a stated scope or period.
Unknown: Available evidence does not answer the question.

An absent value belongs in the third category, not the second.

Available evidence	What can be stated	What must not be inferred
A website has a contact form	An online inquiry form is published	Video consultation or instant appointment booking is available
A service is not mentioned on the website	The service was not established from that material	The business does not provide the service
No consultation fee is published	The fee is not confirmed from the reviewed source	The service is free, inexpensive, or subject to a particular price
A registry contains a matching record	The entity appears in that registry	The office is open now or the professional is currently taking clients
A stated fee is published	The source states that amount under the stated conditions	Taxes, add-ons, currency conversion, or current availability are known unless separately established

Numerical claims require units and conditions. A price comparison, for instance, must distinguish the currency, charging unit, whether tax is included, whether the value is a fixed price or starting price, and the period for which it was stated. Without comparable conditions, a price table should not produce a “cheapest” conclusion.

5. Time, validity, and freshness

Business facts have different rates of change. A company's official name may be stable while appointment availability or published fees may change quickly.

AgentPlaceBase distinguishes the following dates and timestamps:

Field	Meaning
`observed_at`	When a source or its relevant information was observed or retrieved
`checked_at`	When an individual claim was evaluated against the evidence
`valid_from`	When the stated fact or policy begins to apply, if known
`valid_until` / `expires_at`	When the fact's stated validity ends or renewed review is required, if known
`page_updated_at`	When the public representation was materially updated
`revision`	Which version of the underlying record or published representation is being shown

Rebuilding a webpage does not reset the check date for its claims. A recent page-update timestamp must never be treated as proof that every fact was checked that day.

A claim requiring revalidation should be marked stale or withheld from confirmed-result filters when its currency matters to the decision. No general refresh interval guarantees accuracy across all types of information. For immediate operating status, available appointments, or final prices, consult a current business-controlled channel or an appropriate live service before making a consequential decision.

6. Handling disagreements and corrections

Different sources may describe a business differently because one is outdated, refers to another branch, uses a different definition, or reports an actual conflict.

The correct response is not to overwrite an earlier value without explanation. A material discrepancy requires review of the claim, its source, the relevant branch, its conditions, and its observation date.

The editorial rules are:

Preserve the source and the meaning of the original claim within the permitted retention policy.
Mark materially disputed claims as C — Conflicting until they can be resolved.
Exclude unresolved claims from filters that require a confirmed positive or negative answer.
Record material corrections with a reason, affected property, supporting basis, and revision date.
Re-evaluate dependent collections or answers when a corrected claim would change their results.

Correction access is a publication requirement: A production business profile should provide a working correction or error-reporting route, or clearly link to an operational reporting procedure. A record without such a mechanism should not be presented as satisfying this publication standard.

A correction request is not proof by itself, and acceptance is not automatic. The objective is an auditable record, not an unreviewed edit stream.

7. How collections and comparisons are produced

A collection answers a constrained question using a declared set of records and rules. It is not an unexplained editorial ranking.

Consider the question: “Which tax and accounting firms in Seoul have confirmed online consultation options?”

A collection addressing this question must define what online consultation means. A website contact form may establish an online inquiry channel without establishing that a consultation itself takes place remotely. In-person appointments arranged online are another distinct case.

For an AI agent to interpret a collection correctly, its publication should disclose:

Scope: Country, geographic boundary, category, and relevant service definition.
Eligibility: The exact properties and evidence states required for inclusion.
Snapshot: The time or version of the evaluated source dataset.
Coverage: The number of records considered, when known, and the number meeting the confirmed conditions.
Results: Identifiable entity or branch records with the evidence for each matching condition.
Exclusions: Treatment of unknown, conflicting, expired, or out-of-scope records.
Limitations: Whether the dataset represents a checked sample rather than all businesses in the market.

Example inclusion rule: Include a branch in a list of confirmed online consultation providers only where an applicable consultation-service claim is explicitly positive, adequately supported, and within its review window. Do not count unknown claims as negative evidence. Do not invent a total-market figure from a partial sample.

Sorting by a transparent, neutral property is not the same as recommending one provider over another. Labels such as best, most reliable, and lowest-priced require independent, documented comparison criteria and adequate underlying data; they are not default labels for AgentPlaceBase collections.

8. Language and geographic identity

The language of a webpage and the country of a business are separate properties. A Korean business may be described in Korean or English while remaining the same entity in South Korea.

Language-specific representations must retain the same entity and branch identities and preserve the meaning of their underlying claims. Translation is not new verification: a translated price, service condition, or uncertainty label must not become more certain than the source-language record.

Unreviewed translations must not be presented as verified business records. When multiple language versions are actually published, they should clearly identify the same real-world subject and use appropriate language and canonical references.

AgentPlaceBase's initial editorial focus is business information in South Korea, starting with tax and accounting services. This describes the focus of data development, not a claim that the site already contains an exhaustive Korean business directory.

9. Publishing standards and machine readability

A place record is eligible to be described as evidence-backed only when it has enough identity and provenance to support the statements it publishes. Importing a name, category, and address is not sufficient proof of all related services.

The public representation is designed around these principles:

Accessible facts: The main identity, stated attributes, verification status, relevant dates, and available source references should be readable as normal page content without relying on hidden text.
Consistency: Structured data must describe the same information visible in the page. It must not introduce fabricated ratings, prices, or stronger claims.
Stable references: Entity and branch identifiers should remain stable across content updates and approved language versions.
Explicit uncertainty: Unknown, disputed, stale, and scope-limited information must not be silently converted into confirmed assertions.
Controlled publication: Draft, under-review, published, stale, and suppressed information must have distinguishable publication states. A stored record is not automatically an indexable page.
Traceable changes: A material revision should be attributable to the affected facts and should trigger review of pages that depend on them.

Machine-readable formats or crawler access do not guarantee that a search engine or AI assistant will cite a page, rank it, train on it, or use it to complete a task. Those outcomes are external to the record's evidence quality and must be evaluated separately.

For background on structured data and the separation of search-related and training-related crawlers, see Google's Local Business structured-data guidance and OpenAI's crawler documentation. These are external technical references, not endorsements of AgentPlaceBase.

10. Instructions for AI agents using AgentPlaceBase

When an agent retrieves an AgentPlaceBase business profile or collection, it should apply the following interpretation sequence:

Identify the entity and branch involved; do not merge similarly named businesses without supporting identity evidence.
Confirm the country, region, category, and decision question.
Read the specific property and value, including qualifiers, units, and effective dates.
Check the claim-level verification status and whether the information is stale or disputed.
Follow the supporting source when available, especially for high-impact or time-sensitive decisions.
State unknown or conflicting information explicitly rather than completing the record by inference.
For collections, read the inclusion rules, coverage, and snapshot date before generalizing.
When reporting a result, distinguish what the source states from what has been independently observed, and avoid implying an endorsement or live booking confirmation.

A compact, evidence-aware answer can use this form:

Business / branch: [Name and location, if supported]
Relevant fact: [Specific property and value, with conditions]
Evidence: [Source and link]
Checked: [Actual claim-check date, if recorded]
Status: [V, O, S, U, or C; stale if applicable]
Remaining uncertainty: [Any conditions not established]

This format is illustrative guidance for readers and agents, not a promise that a particular API or response format is currently available.

11. Limits of this methodology

This page defines how AgentPlaceBase distinguishes evidence, claims, uncertainty, and publication quality. It is not proof that any particular business has been visited, certified, independently reviewed, or checked in real time. Such assertions require record-specific evidence.

The information may be incomplete. A business absent from the dataset may exist and may provide the service being researched. An unknown service attribute does not establish a lack of service. A source can change after its last observation. A record about a licensed professional is not, by itself, confirmation of current license validity unless an appropriate, current source supports that exact assertion.

For legally, financially, medically, or operationally consequential decisions, use a current authoritative source and appropriate professional or business confirmation. AgentPlaceBase is an evidence reference, not a substitute for such verification.

Policy version history

Version	Date	Change
1.0	November 2, 2026	Initial methodology: entity/branch identity, claim-level evidence, verification states, freshness, collections, language handling, corrections, and interpretation guidance

To report an error, use the correction form. Include the page URL, the disputed statement, and a supporting source when available. Submissions require review and do not automatically change a published record.

AgentPlaceBase
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