Editorial policy

Independence from commission

We earn an affiliate commission when you buy through our links, and it has no say in what we recommend. Rankings are decided before anyone looks at what pays more, and we routinely place a cheaper bottle above a pricier one — and steer you to a clone instead of a counterfeit-risk original — because it is the better buy for you. Full detail is in our affiliate disclosure.

No fabrication, ever

We do not invent reviews, ratings, review counts, longevity "test" numbers, or credentials. Our scores are honest judgments derived from the research described in our methodology, never presented as laboratory data. When a claim comes from someone else — a note list, an owner consensus, a market statistic — we say whose it is and link it in the sources on the page.

Honesty about what we did not do

We do not run a lab, we have not smelled every batch of every bottle, and we say so plainly rather than implying otherwise. Where our editor has genuine first-hand familiarity with a scent, we say that; where an assessment is compiled from published notes and community consensus, we say that too. We never blur the two, and we never dress a compiled impression up as a hands-on test.

The "skip it" rule

Every product carries an honest "don't buy this if…" line, and a review that ends in "skip it" is doing its job as well as one that ends in "buy it." A page that only ever says yes is an advertisement, not a review.

Sourcing and citations

Factual claims — notes, concentrations, market statistics, "smells like X" comparisons — are attributable. Market statistics are quoted with the source named; "smells like" calls are labeled as community consensus, not lab fact. We only cite sources we have actually read.

Corrections

We make mistakes, and when we do we fix them. If you spot a factual error, a broken link, or a price that looks wrong, tell us — we aim to correct genuine factual mistakes within 48 hours, and we update the "reviewed" date on a page when we revise it.

Freshness

Prices refresh automatically and are date-stamped; if the data goes stale, the number disappears rather than misleading you. We revisit our recommendation pages on a roughly quarterly cadence and update promptly when a fragrance is reformulated or discontinued.