Why this signal matters for Google
Every site publishes a mistake sooner or later. What matters is what you do next. An accounting firm writes that a filing deadline is June 15. It was May 31. Three options. Leave it. Fix it quietly. Or issue a correction: a short note, on the page itself, that says what was wrong, what is right and when it was fixed. Newspapers have done this for generations, which is why most people picture a newspaper correction when they hear the word. Academic journals call the same thing an erratum or a corrigendum. The quiet fix looks tidier. It is worse. The client who wrote down June 15 never finds out, and the reader who notices the change wonders what else you rewrote. Even careful fact-checking before you publish lets some errors through, and your readers know it. What they want is to hear it from you: in the 2018 Knight Foundation and Gallup survey, 86% of Americans said that correcting mistakes quickly and openly is very important for trusting a news organization.
Google does not ask for a "Corrections" page. It has people check two things a correction shows at once. Its search results are graded by human evaluators working from a published handbook, the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG). Section 3.2 covers the main content of a page: is it accurate, was it made with care? Section 2.5.3 has them look for who answers for the site and how to reach them when something goes wrong. A dated correction speaks to both. It proves somebody rereads what gets published, and that reader reports land somewhere. On the company blogs I take over, I regularly find articles whose text changed while the date stayed put, with no line saying what was edited. A site showing ten years of articles and not one correction does not prove it never gets things wrong. It shows nobody checks.
The riskier the topic, the faster and more visible the correction. A mistake in a cake recipe costs a cake. A wrong dose, appeal deadline or tax rate costs money or health. Google files these subjects under YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), and QRG section 3.4.1 sets a higher bar for trust on them than anywhere else. On those pages, put the correction at the top of the article, not the bottom: a returning reader should see it before rereading the number. And tell the people who may have acted on the wrong information. A clinic that published the wrong fasting time before a test does not stop at fixing the page: it writes to the patients who were sent the link.
A copied mistake does not fix itself, not in your readers' notes and not in AI answers. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity build their answers out of pages like yours. If your wrong figure was read, it can resurface in an answer with your name beside it. Deleting it quietly warns nobody. A clear note such as "Correction, October 2, 2026: the deadline is May 31, not June 15" gives readers and machines a dated sentence that replaces the old one. Change the page's last updated date as well, and keep the original publication date: together they show what moved, and when. A correction is still not an update. An update says the facts changed. A correction says we got it wrong. The reader is entitled to know which one it was.
The NeuroEEAT scoring grid (0-10)
Take the last mistake you fixed on your site and look at what a reader can still learn about it.
| Score | Description | Concrete indicators |
|---|---|---|
| 0-2 | Errors left standing | Known mistakes stay online. There is no simple way to report one. When a text changes, nothing says so. |
| 3-4 | Silent fixes | You fix things when someone tells you, with no note and no date. A reader who saw the old version cannot tell what changed. |
| 5-6 | Case-by-case notes | Some corrections get a line in the article, others do not. The format differs from page to page and the date is often missing. |
| 7-8 | Dated correction, written rule | Every factual error gets a dated note on the page: what was wrong, what is right. An address for reporting errors is visible, and a short corrections policy explains how you handle them. |
| 9-10 | Public record, kept current | On top of that: a "Corrections" page lists recent corrections, the modification date is declared in the page code (dateModified, in JSON-LD), newsletters that carried the error get their own correction, and a named person decides on corrections. |
How to audit it on your site
Twenty minutes, your ten most-read pages and your inbox.
- 01
Find the last mistake you corrected
Search your email for the most recent error report from a reader or a client. Open the page it was about. Is there any trace of the fix, with a date? If you cannot find a single report in two years, the problem may be that nobody knows where to write.
- 02
Report an error the way a reader would
From an article, look for a way to tell the author about a mistake. Count the clicks. A "Report an error" link under the article or a dedicated address is enough. A general contact form, buried among quote requests, is not.
- 03
Compare your pages with their older versions
Enter the address of three important articles in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which keeps dated copies of web pages. Compare the figures and dates with the live version. Every factual difference without a note is a silent fix.
- 04
Reread the wording and placement of your notes
A good note says three things: the error, the right version, the date. It sits on the page that carried the mistake, at the top if the error could have cost the reader something. "Article updated" with no detail does not count: nobody can tell what was wrong.
- 05
Follow the mistake wherever it travelled
Did the error go out in a newsletter, on social media, in a PDF or an ad? The corrected page does not reach those copies. For each channel, note whether a correction email or a follow-up post was sent.
How to activate or improve it
From one properly written correction to a rule the whole team applies without thinking.
Correct in the open
- Fix the text as soon as the error is confirmed, then add a note on the page: "Correction, [date]: an earlier version said X. The right information is Y."
- Keep the original publication date and show the modification date beside it.
- Add an address or a "Report an error" link under every article.
- Reply to the person who flagged it: thank you, it is fixed, here is the link.
Write the rule down
- Draft a ten-line corrections policy: which errors get a note, where it appears, how fast you fix things.
- Separate three cases: the typo (fixed with no note), the factual error (dated correction), the information that changed since (dated update).
- Put the correction at the top of the page when the error touches an amount, a deadline, a dose or a legal rule.
- When the error went out by newsletter, send a correction email to the same list, with "Correction" at the start of the subject line.
- Name the person who decides on corrections and settles disagreements.
Keep a public record
- Create a "Corrections" page listing the corrections of the last twelve months, with a link to each article.
- Declare the modification date in the page code (dateModified, in JSON-LD, the format search engines read). A news site can also declare its policy there with the schema.org correctionsPolicy property.
- When an article cannot be saved, do not delete it quietly: leave a retraction note that explains why, or redirect to the accurate version.
- Tell the sites that repeated your mistake, and send them the link to the correction.
- Review the record every quarter: three corrections on the same kind of figure point to a checking problem before publication.
5 common mistakes to avoid
Sector specifics
Clinic or medical information site
A wrong dose, duration or contraindication gets fixed within the hour, at the top of the page. The note names the professional who signed off on the corrected version. If the page was sent to patients, they receive the correction directly: the fixed page is not enough.
Law firm
A wrong limitation period or amount can cost a reader their claim. Correct it, date it, then look for other articles on the site that repeat the same figure: the error has often been copied from one page to the next. Keep the correction (you got it wrong) apart from the update (the law changed).
Prices, opening hours, promotions
The typical mistake is a wrong price or promotion date in an ad or a newsletter. Publish the correction where the error appeared, and say what you are doing for customers who came in because of the old information.
Where the rule comes from
Serious newsrooms publish their corrections policy and keep a corrections page. Borrow their format: a note at the top or the foot of the article, a date, a precise description of the error. A company blog that does the same stands apart from most competitors, who flag nothing.
Signals to activate in parallel
A correction only counts if the rest of the page can be checked. These signals go with it:
FAQ
What is an example of a correction?
A typical correction reads: "Correction, October 2, 2026: an earlier version of this article said the filing deadline was June 15. It is May 31." It names the error, gives the right information and carries a date. It sits on the page where the mistake appeared, not on a separate page nobody visits. The newspaper correction is the model, and it works the same way on a company website.
How to write a correction in a newspaper?
State what was published, state what is correct, and date it, in two or three plain sentences. Do not repeat the error at length and do not explain how it happened unless it helps the reader. Newsrooms attach the note to the online article and often list it on a corrections page as well. If the mistake is in someone else's article about you, write to the editor with the exact sentence and the proof, and ask rather than demand.
How do I issue a correction email?
Send it to the same list, with "Correction" at the start of the original subject line. Put the right information in the first line and the explanation after it, in one sentence. Do not resend the whole message without saying what changed: readers would have to compare the two versions themselves. Fix the web page too if the email linked to one.
How to issue a correction online?
Fix the text first, then add a dated note on the same page. The note says what the page used to say, what is right and the day you fixed it. Put it at the top if the error could have cost the reader something, at the bottom otherwise. Update the modification date, and publish the same correction on every channel the mistake went out on.
Does admitting a mistake in public hurt a site's credibility?
No, it does the opposite: an error corrected in the open reassures more than a site that claims it is never wrong. In the 2018 Knight Foundation and Gallup survey, 86% of Americans said correcting mistakes quickly and openly was very important for trusting a news organization. What damages trust is the error a reader finds alone and you never acknowledged. A few corrections a year on an active site show that somebody rereads.
Case study
Before · a mistake fixed in silence
After · a dated correction on every channel
A scenario built to illustrate the method: it is not a client case and the scores are indicative. On your own site, measure the number of error reports received, the time between report and fix, and reader replies to the correction.