How a fact becomes “verified”
Atlas never shows a relocation fact to the public until it clears a real review against a primary source. Here is exactly what that means.
What “verified” requires
A fact is only marked verified, and only then shown on a public country page, when all of the following hold:
- It is checked against a source on an official government domain (a national ministry, tax authority, immigration service, or equivalent), an embassy or consulate site, a municipal or city government site, or a national or local tourism board.
- For a narrow set of categories with no government publisher — banking fees, money-transfer pricing, or Employer-of-Record/global-payroll rules — a named, reputable multinational company’s own official page counts as a source, and only on that company’s own domain. A blog, review site, or travel guide quoting the company never counts, however often it is cited.
- For facts specific to an accredited school, college or university, the institution’s own official domain counts as a source.
- Every verified fact carries the source URL and the date it was last reviewed, both shown on the page.
Anything that does not clear this bar is held as “needs review” and is never shown publicly — there is no fallback to an unsourced guess on a live page. Wikipedia, aggregator sites such as Passport Index, and generic relocation blogs are never treated as a source, no matter how frequently they are cited in search results.
Where facts come from
Real search results are matched against a document’s existing claims. Where a claim is confirmed by an acceptable source under the rule above, the fact is verified with that source recorded. Where a claim is contradicted, the fact is corrected and the change is logged. Where nothing acceptable confirms or contradicts a claim, it stays unverified rather than being marked verified on the strength of a plausible-sounding but unofficial page.
How often facts are re-reviewed
Verified facts are re-checked on a recurring schedule rather than written once and left; a fact whose source has since changed (a new visa fee, an updated tax bracket) is corrected and its review date updated. The review date shown on every fact is the actual date of its last check, not the date the page was first published.