Authority and distribution, control 11 of 12
A-11 Separate legitimate PR from prohibited authority manipulation
P2Needs your evidence
Truthful PR can be tested; site-reputation abuse, fake news, fake reviews and deceptive endorsements cannot be made acceptable by calling them experiments.
- Priority
- Optimisation.
- Hard gate
- No
- Change class
- APPROVAL_REQUIRED: Required exact authority must be valid before the consequential action.
- Quality bucket
- Authority and distribution readiness
Evidence to review
- Campaign rationale, evidence, policy review, approvals and measured results.
How to implement
- Require genuine news, research or audience value.
- Review platform policy, ownership and paid-placement disclosure before execution.
- Keep controlled commercial tests separate from core ranking claims.
- Reject tactics whose mechanism depends on deception or prohibited manipulation.
How UltimateSEO checks this
Needs your evidence. No automated check covers this control, so it stays UNKNOWN until evidence is supplied.
Evidence needed: the experiment log for any press release or third-party authority tactic, with hypothesis, measurement and policy check.
States used: PASS, FAIL, UNKNOWN, NOT_APPLICABLE or BLOCKED. UNKNOWN is never shown as a pass. How states work.
Myth guards that reference this control
Sources
Part of The UltimateSEO Framework v4.3, catalogue dated 2026-10-14. Evidence states, control states and the publish gate are explained on the hub.