Sources

No claim on this site stands without a source. This page says which kinds of source we accept, how we rank them, and what we treat as a lead rather than as evidence. The sources for any one brand are on its own page, with the date the brand was last verified.

Primary sources

These are what we cite:

• Trade registers: the Dutch Kamer van Koophandel, the German Handelsregister, the French Infogreffe, the Spanish Registro Mercantil, the British Companies House and their equivalents. A register entry is the strongest evidence of where a company is registered and who owns it.
• Annual reports and financial filings, including filings with a stock-exchange regulator.
• Investor-relations pages and corporate information published by the company itself, such as an imprint or a shareholder structure page.
• The EU transparency register, where a company appears in it.

Secondary sources

Reputable business press, industry databases and company press releases are acceptable when no primary source is available. A brand that rests on one of them is marked with medium confidence.

Leads, never sources

Encyclopaedias, blogs, forums and what a researcher happens to know are useful for knowing what to look for. None of them is ever cited. A fact found on Wikipedia is followed to the document Wikipedia itself points at, and that document is what appears on the brand page.

The ownership rule

For the fact that decides the score, who controls the brand, at least one cited source has to name the controlling company and its country of registration in a document we have opened. A page that names the parent but not its country is half a source; the register or filing that names the country is the other half. When that cannot be found, the brand is shown as not rated.

Dates and drift

Every source records the date it was retrieved, and every brand page shows the date the brand was last verified. Ownership changes. Older records are re-checked first, and a correction is made when a source no longer supports a claim.

Found a mistake

Use the contact form, or the “report a mistake” link on the brand page, which fills in the brand for you. A correction with a source is the most useful message this site can receive.