Independence
- No sponsored placements. No brand can buy a position on this site, at any price, in any format.
- No paid inclusion. Nothing appears on a list because someone asked for it to.
- No gifted product. We do not accept free samples, PR packages or press trips. Accepting a product creates an obligation whether or not anyone intends one.
- No brand relationships. Glow & Gild is owned by Fathom & Foundry and has no ownership, investment or advisory relationship with any brand, retailer or manufacturer covered here.
- No pre-publication review. No brand sees a page before it is published, and no brand can request a change to one after.
- Ranking is never influenced by commission rate. Buyer-first beats commission, without exception. Where the cheaper product is the better product, the cheaper product is the pick.
The single revenue source is affiliate commission, described in full on the affiliate disclosure page. If any of the above ever changes, it will be stated here and on the affected pages before publication rather than after.
Sourcing Standards
Sourcing substitutes for a credential on this site, so the standard has to be higher than it would be otherwise. Acceptable sources, in order of preference:
- Manufacturer formulation documentation, spec sheets and product inserts — for concentration, form and co-ingredients.
- Published regulatory and standards documents, such as permitted UV filter concentrations or ingredient concentration limits.
- Peer-reviewed literature, cited to the specific paper rather than to a summary of it.
- Primary brand documentation for fragrance composition and note listings.
Never acceptable: another affiliate site's claims restated, anything recalled from memory, or a number with no traceable origin. Every page on this site carries a Sources section listing what was actually consulted, with working links.
Claims We Do Not Make
Three categories of claim are prohibited on this site regardless of how well they would perform.
Experience we do not have. No testing claims, no ownership claims, no lab, no testers, no before-and-after photography. This is stated explicitly on every commercial page rather than left to inference.
Credentials we do not hold. No dermatologist-reviewed line, no medically-reviewed badge, no expert panel, no tenure claim. The author is described by interest, which is true, rather than by expertise, which would not be.
Numbers we cannot verify. No prices, no star ratings, no review counts, no aggregate scores. There is no live price feed on this site and no first-party ratings, so none of those appear — including in the structured data, where a fabricated price would be both a lie and a policy violation.
Corrections
If a page is wrong, email info@glowandgild.com with the URL and the problem. We will check it against the source and fix it.
Corrections are made on the page and noted on the page, with the date and what changed. We do not silently edit an error out of existence. A reference that quietly rewrites its own history is not a reference, and a reader who found something wrong once is entitled to see that it was fixed rather than to wonder whether they imagined it.
Where a correction changes a recommendation, the change is described rather than just applied — including when the previous recommendation was ours.
Update Cadence
| Page type | Reviewed |
|---|---|
| Roundups and tool pages | Quarterly |
| Comparisons and ingredient monographs | Every six months |
| Fragrance note and family pages | Annually |
| Trust pages, including this one | Quarterly |
Additional triggers that prompt an immediate update regardless of schedule: a recommended product is discontinued or reformulated; a regulatory change affects an ingredient's permitted concentration; or a factual error is reported.
The last-updated date on every page reflects real changes. It is not stamped on a redeploy, and it does not move because the site was rebuilt.