How our guides are made
Besides our family trips, YS Feet publishes independent travel guides. Each one is a small website about one place. This page is how they are made. It is the same for every guide.
One guide per place
Each guide covers one place, like an island, a park or a trek. I pick the places, and the pages inside each guide, from what people really search for. If a page can't be filled with real facts, the page is dropped. We don't pad.
Every fact has a source
Every fact starts on a named public page. When a fact is saved, it keeps the source link, a quote copied word for word from that page, the date it was read and a date for its next re-check. The guide pages are written from these saved facts and nothing else.
Sources are ranked. Official and government sites and the operators' own sites come first. Then booking sites. Then Wikivoyage and Wikipedia, then news reports.
When sources disagree
If two sources give different numbers, the page shows the range and names both sources. If something can't be confirmed from a source, it is left out.
Who writes and who checks
The guide pages are written by AI (Anthropic's Claude), from the saved facts only. Then automatic checks run on every page. Then I review every page before it goes live, and again after launch.
I don't hide the AI part. The facts and the sources are the work. The AI only puts them into sentences.
Photos
Real photos only, from Wikimedia Commons and Pexels, each one credited. For a place to eat, a guide may show a small photo from that place's Google Maps listing, credited and linked to the listing. AI is used only for the logos. Never for a photo of a place.
What you won't find in a guide
- Made-up trip stories. A guide never says "we visited" if nobody did.
- Reviews written by us.
- Ratings we made up. A rating shown is from the booking site or Google Maps, with the date it was read.
- Paid placements.
How the guides earn
Some links in the guides go to tour and hotel booking sites. If you book through one of them, the guide may earn a commission. You pay the same price.
The commission never decides what is listed or in what order. No hotel, restaurant or tour company can pay to be in a guide, or to be higher on a list.
Kept up to date
Every guide is refreshed every two to three months. A refresh takes a batch of facts back to their source pages: the oldest first, and the ones that change most, like prices, timetables and opening months.
If a source no longer shows a fact, the fact is flagged. Then it is updated, moved to a better source or taken off the page. Every guide page shows its sources and its own change history.
Found a mistake?
Each guide has its own contact page. Tell us which page and which fact is wrong, and send a source if you have one. You can also write to hello@ysfeet.com.