Do we change our own website, or somewhere else?

Start with the original answer, its sources and confirmed business facts. A clear identity statement on your own website can be justified when an answer describes the wrong type of business. Other issues may require changes elsewhere. A citation does not prove which source caused the answer.

What your own site is genuinely good for

• Being unambiguous about facts. Dimensions, materials, compatibility, what is in the box, what the warranty covers. Assistants get these wrong when the web disagrees with itself, and your own page is the reference that settles it.
• Being retrievable. If assistants and their crawlers cannot read your pages, nothing else you do matters. This is a small piece of work with a hard floor under it.
• Answering the objection directly. If the category's recurring worry is whether the coating lasts, a page that addresses it in the buyer's own words is quotable. A page that says the coating is premium is not.

When another source may matter

The sources the assistants actually drew on. In most scans a handful of third-party pages sit behind the majority of a category's answers — review sites, a couple of forums, comparison articles, retailer listings. Those are where the argument is happening, and they are influenceable even though they are not yours:

• A retailer listing with a wrong or missing specification can be corrected, and often has been wrong for years.
• A comparison article that omits you can be approached, especially if you can hand its author something concrete they lack.
• A recurring objection in a forum thread that nobody from the brand ever answered is both a visibility problem and a customer service one.

How we make this specific rather than general

Every answer we collect keeps the sources that appeared with it. So instead of the general advice above, the intended workflow is to retain the relevant sources, how often they appeared and what they say. Review their relevance before proposing or ranking changes. That converts an unbounded public-relations problem into a finite list of things to go and fix.