Editorial

Editorial standards

By Jarred O'Brien Last reviewed July 2026

How every article on The Field Guide gets researched, sourced, written, and checked, with a human always in the loop.

A lot of small-business web advice online is written to rank on Google, not to be right. We take the opposite stance: an article is only worth publishing if a real business owner could act on it and not get burned. This page lays out exactly how that gets enforced, so you can judge the work for yourself.

Who writes this

Every article is written by Jarred O'Brien, the designer and developer who runs Studio O'Brien. There is no anonymous content team and no ghost-written filler. When a piece reflects hands-on experience, what actually happened when we optimized a profile or rebuilt a slow site, it's Jarred's own, and it's written in the first person on purpose. When it's a claim from outside research, it's cited.

1

Every number has a source

Statistics and specific claims link to a primary or reputable secondary source: Whitespark, BrightLocal, the FTC, Google's own documentation, government data. If a figure can't be sourced, it doesn't run as a fact.

2

Opinion is labeled as opinion

Where we give our own read instead of citing a study (say, "here's what I see in Cleveland County every day"), we say so plainly. You always know whether you're reading research or a practitioner's judgment.

3

A human edits and fact-checks every piece

We use AI tools to help draft and organize research, the same way most publishers now do. But nothing publishes without Jarred reading it end to end, checking every claim against its source, and rewriting anything that's vague, wrong, or not how it actually works in the field.

4

Written for the person, not the algorithm

Articles answer a real question a business owner asked. We don't pad word counts, stuff keywords, or bury the answer to keep you scrolling. If the answer is one paragraph, it's one paragraph.

5

We keep it current, and correct it

Search and compliance rules change. When a factor shifts or we get something wrong, we update the article and note it. Found an error? Email it to us and we'll fix it.

On our use of AI

We'll be straight with you, because Google's own guidelines ask publishers to be: AI assists with drafting and research organization here. What it never does is publish unsupervised. Google's position, and ours, is that AI-assisted content is fine when it's edited, fact-checked, and grounded in genuine expertise by a human. That human is Jarred, and his name is on every byline because he stands behind the result. Content that's mass-produced without that oversight is exactly what we refuse to ship.

Why this matters to you

If you're going to make a decision about your website or your Google Business Profile based on something you read here, you deserve to know who wrote it, where the numbers came from, and who checked them. That's the whole point of putting this in writing. If anything on the site doesn't meet the bar above, tell us.

Questions about something we published?

Corrections, sources, or a topic you wish we'd cover: send it over. A real person reads every message.

Email the studio About Jarred
Jarred O'Brien
Jarred O'BrienDesigner, developer & author · Studio O'Brien · Read the full bio