📐 Editorial Policy

GuesTheCity publishes city guides, travel articles, city comparisons and planning tools. This page explains how that content is made, so you can judge how much to rely on it. Questions about any page are welcome via our contact page.

Who writes the content

Guides and articles are written and edited by the GuesTheCity editorial team, the small team described on our About page. Articles that carry the byline "GuesTheCity Editorial Team" are team work: one person drafts, another reviews. We do not invent author personas, and we do not publish content written by advertisers as if it were our own.

Researched guides, not personal travel diaries

Most of our content is researched, not based on a recent visit by the writer. We say so because it matters: a researched guide is good at facts, options and planning, and weaker on how a place feels on a particular day. Where a piece draws on first-hand experience, we say that in the text. We never claim to have stayed somewhere, eaten somewhere or taken a tour that we did not.

How we choose sources

• Official sources first for anything practical: tourism boards, museums and attractions, transport operators and government pages for opening arrangements, tickets, fees and entry rules.
• Reference sources such as UNESCO's World Heritage list, national statistics offices and climate averages for facts like heritage status, population and weather.
• Traveller communities (for example Wikivoyage and travel forums) only to understand what visitors commonly ask, love or complain about, never as the only source for a fact.
• Blog guides link to the main sources they rely on, so you can check the current situation yourself.

How we check facts

• Statements of fact, such as "is a UNESCO World Heritage Site", a price or a travel time, should be traceable to a source. When we cannot confirm a claim, we remove it or rephrase it as an opinion or an approximation.
• Prices and budgets are given as ranges with the year they refer to. They are planning estimates, not quotes.
• Things that change often, such as visa and entry rules, renovations, strikes and event dates, are flagged, and we point to the official page instead of repeating a detail that may already be out of date. For that reason we do not offer a visa checker as an authoritative tool.
• Our own scores, such as budget levels, seasonal ratings, comparison verdicts and Destination Finder results, are editorial judgements built from typical prices and climate averages. We label them as ours.

How we use AI writing tools

We use AI writing tools to help with research summaries, first drafts and editing. They do not publish anything on their own. Before an article goes live, a member of the team reviews it, checks the practical facts against the sources it links to, removes anything we cannot confirm and edits it for clarity. The Destination Finder and the city comparisons are not AI chatbots: they are rule-based and editorial, written and maintained by us.

Data from our games and visitors

How the game photos are chosen and checked, and how levels and points work, is explained on how our games work.

• Game statistics, such as which cities players mix up, come from anonymous answers in our games. A figure is only shown once enough people have answered, and the thresholds are explained on each page.
• City rankings come from visitor ratings. A city is only ranked after several ratings, and the method is explained on the page.
• Visitor tips are reviewed before they appear.

Sponsored content and affiliate links

• No paid rankings. Nobody can pay to be included in a guide, a comparison, a "where to go" list or the rankings, or to be placed higher.
• Sponsored content is labelled. Sponsored articles carry a "Sponsored" notice at the top, and sponsored listings and venue pages are marked as paid placements.
• Paid links do not pass ranking credit. Every link we are paid to include, and every affiliate link, carries rel="sponsored". We do not sell links meant to influence search rankings.
• Affiliate links to hotel, tour and flight sites may earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you. They never decide which city or option we recommend.

Updates

City pages show the date their information was last updated, and blog articles show an "Updated" date when they have been substantially revised, not for small fixes such as a typo. We review the most visited guides first, and pages about fast-changing topics more often.

Corrections

If you find a mistake or something that is out of date, please tell us or email support@guessthecityapp.com with the page address. We check every report, correct errors we can confirm and update the page date when the change is significant.