Frequently asked questions

Farosio helps independent brands strengthen their public identity. It lets brand owners create a structured public profile where they can show what makes them different, tell their story, and make their brand information readable by people, search engines, and AI systems that crawl the web.

Approved profiles include structured data in the page source and a clean markdown version of the same public profile content. Farosio also notifies participating search engines when profiles are published or updated.

Farosio is built for small and independent brand founders who want their brand to look more complete, credible, and consistent online. It is useful for any brand that has a real public presence but no structured, machine-readable identity that clearly brings its official information together.

Yes. Creating a brand profile on Farosio is free. There is no paid tier, no trial period, and no credit card required.

A website is built for human visitors. A social media page is built for followers. Each can show an important part of the brand, but they often leave the brand identity scattered across many places.

A Farosio profile brings the brand identity together into one structured trust profile. It gives people a stable profile page, gives search engines Schema.org data in the page source, and gives LLMs and agents a cleaner markdown version of the approved profile content.

Yes. Approved public profiles also have a markdown version at farosio.com/brands/[your-slug].md. It contains approved public profile content in a cleaner text format for LLMs, agents, and other systems that prefer markdown. It is generated automatically from the same reviewed profile information.

Farosio is built to strengthen the brand identity layer. It is not only a link page, crawler instruction file, company listing, or schema snippet.

Farosio starts from the brand's perspective. It gives authorized brand owners a place to present their story, values, offerings, official links, and credibility signals truthfully, instead of being reduced to a category, competitor list, or lead-generation entry.

Farosio helps a brand owner organize scattered public information into one structured brand reference, submit important signals for review, publish the profile, and keep that reference discoverable over time. Approved profiles are available as a normal web page, structured data in the page source, and markdown at /brands/[slug].md.

Many software directories and comparison marketplaces are buyer-facing. They are built to help people compare tools, browse alternatives, read reviews, request demos, or connect with vendors. That can be useful, but it often places the brand inside a marketplace context before the brand has had a chance to clearly explain itself.

Farosio is brand-facing. It gives a brand a structured home where it can explain who it is, what it offers, what it stands for, what makes it different, and which official signals support that identity. That reference is published for humans as a profile, for search engines as structured data, and for LLM/agent readers as markdown. The goal is not to turn the brand into a comparison listing. The goal is to make the brand easier to understand.

No. Farosio is not built around alternatives pages, ranking tables, competitor lists, or "best tools" comparisons.

A Farosio profile is focused on the brand's own identity: its story, offerings, official links, reviewed signals, structured data, and markdown profile content. This helps avoid forcing a brand into a comparison context that may not accurately represent what the brand is.

A schema generator usually creates markup that must be added to your own website. That can be useful, but it also means you need to manage implementation, avoid conflicting or duplicate schema, and keep the markup updated when your brand information changes.

Farosio creates, reviews, publishes, and keeps your brand reference discoverable. It gives your brand a hosted public profile, Schema.org structured data in the page source, a markdown version for cleaner text reading, review status, and a stable reference page that can be used by search engines, AI systems, media, investors, partners, and other people trying to understand the brand.

llms.txt usually helps describe or point AI systems toward content already available on your own website. It does not create an independent public brand reference, review submitted signals, or connect your website, social profiles, credibility references, offerings, and brand narrative into one structured profile.

Farosio uses its own llms.txt to document where approved brand profile pages and markdown profiles live. In simple terms, llms.txt can help point to content on a website. Farosio creates the reviewed public brand reference itself, publishes a markdown version of that reference, and keeps the profile discoverable beyond the brand's own website.

robots.txt is a crawler access file. It tells crawlers which parts of a site they may or may not request. It does not explain who a brand is, confirm the brand's official links, review submitted credibility signals, or create a structured public brand profile.

Farosio is not a crawler permission file. It is a public identity layer for brands, with profile pages, structured data, and markdown versions that crawlers can read when profiles are approved.

Link pages are mainly designed to help human visitors click through to a collection of URLs. They are useful for social bios and campaigns, but they are not built as a structured brand identity record for search engines, AI systems, media, or investors.

Farosio is more formal. It gives the brand a public trust profile that connects official links, website, social presence, founder details, narrative, products, services, availability channels, credibility references, review status, structured data, and markdown output in one place. That profile can be shared with media, investors, partners, buyers, and other people evaluating the brand, while also helping machines understand the brand more clearly.

Company databases are mainly built to catalog businesses, funding, leadership, and market information. They can be useful references, but their primary job is not to strengthen a brand's identity layer or bring scattered brand signals together into one structured profile.

Farosio is built specifically for that job. It helps a brand owner organize official links, website, social presence, founder details, narrative, products, services, availability channels, and credibility references into one public brand reference. Approved information can then be reflected in the profile page, structured data, and markdown profile. The AI Signal Score helps show which important identity signals are complete, missing, pending, or verified, so the brand can keep improving its public signal over time.

Some brand facts are useful in many places: name, website, location, category, founder details, offerings, social links, availability channels, and credibility references. The difference is the purpose behind collecting them.

Many directories use this information to power comparison pages, lead forms, software categories, alternatives pages, or marketplace listings. Farosio uses the information to create a clearer public identity record for the brand, with reviewed signals, structured data, and markdown profile content that people, search engines, and AI systems can understand.

Google Business Profile is mainly focused on local business presence: location, opening hours, reviews, maps visibility, and how a business appears inside Google's local surfaces.

Farosio is focused on building and strengthening the brand identity itself. It brings together the brand's official website, social presence, founder details, narrative, products, services, availability channels, credibility references, review status, structured data, and markdown profile into one public brand reference. This can support search engines, AI systems, media, investors, partners, and other people trying to understand the brand beyond local discovery.

Wikipedia and Wikidata are public knowledge projects with community rules, editorial standards, and notability requirements. They are not places where every legitimate brand can create or control a profile, and many early or independent brands will not qualify for inclusion.

Farosio serves a different purpose. It gives authorized brand owners a structured public brand reference they can build, update, and submit for review. The output is controlled by the profile workflow: an HTML profile, structured data, and markdown generated from approved public fields. It helps strengthen the brand's public identity layer even before the brand is widely covered in third-party encyclopedic sources.

No. Press coverage, customer reviews, directory listings, and independent citations can help a brand's public signal, but many serious early brands do not have those yet.

Farosio exists partly because that starting point is difficult. A brand can begin with truthful self-submitted information, official links, domain ownership, offerings, and reviewable credibility signals, then improve the profile as stronger external references become available.

Yes. When an approved profile is published or updated, Farosio keeps the profile discoverable through standard search and AI discovery paths, includes approved HTML and markdown profile URLs where appropriate, and notifies participating discovery systems where supported.

This helps crawlers find the public brand reference, but it does not guarantee indexing, ranking, AI mentions, traffic, or how quickly any third-party system will update.

The goal is not only discovery; it is stronger recognition. Farosio helps your brand present a clearer identity so search engines and AI systems have a better chance of understanding what the brand is.

AI systems and search engines rely on clear public signals to understand entities on the web. When a crawler visits your Farosio profile, it can see a structured description of your brand in the page source and a cleaner markdown version of the approved profile content. Together, these outputs make it easier for external systems to recognize your brand as a real, specific entity and describe it accurately when relevant.

Schema.org is an open vocabulary for describing things on the web — businesses, products, people, events, and more. It was created collaboratively by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex so that search engines and AI systems have a shared language for understanding web content.

JSON-LD is the format used to embed Schema.org data into a web page. Farosio generates this automatically from the information you submit. Markdown is separate: it is a clean text version of the approved public profile, not a replacement for structured data. You do not need to write any code.

Farosio reviews your profile before making it publicly visible. The review checks that submitted information does not violate the Content Policy — it is not a verification of factual accuracy. Once your profile passes review, it is published at farosio.com/brands/[your-slug], with a markdown version at farosio.com/brands/[your-slug].md. Farosio notifies participating search engines on publish or update. From that point, crawlers may visit and read it on their own schedule.

Most profiles are reviewed within a few business days. You will receive an email when your profile status changes. If your profile is not approved, the email will explain why and what you can correct.

First, update the rejected entries in your dashboard and resubmit them for review. If you believe the rejection was incorrect, email review@farosio.com with the reference code from your review email and a brief explanation. This address is for brand owners appealing decisions about their own submissions.

Sign in to your dashboard, open the brand profile editor, and update the field that is wrong or outdated. Basic saved information updates your profile data, while review-required information may need Farosio review before it becomes verified or appears in verified structured data or markdown profile output.

If a field was previously rejected, it only returns to pending review after you make an actual change to that field. Opening the editor and saving the same value again does not create a new review request.

When you change a rejected item and save it, that item moves from "Needs update" to "Pending approval." Farosio then reviews the new version. If it is approved, it can contribute to your verified score and approved public outputs, including the profile page, structured data, and markdown profile where relevant. If it is rejected again, you will receive a customer-facing note explaining what needs to change.

This applies to review-required items such as social links, brand narrative, credibility signals, and domain-related submissions.

Rejected information stays marked as needing an update. It does not count as verified, and it may not be included in verified public outputs such as structured data or markdown profile content. Your profile can still use information that has already been accepted, but incomplete or rejected sections may limit your score and the strength of your public brand signal.

Usually, already approved information can remain visible while the new version is waiting for review. New or changed review-required information is not treated as verified until Farosio approves it. The public profile and markdown version continue to use approved public information while pending changes are reviewed.

Yes. Your Farosio public profile is designed to help your brand look more organized, credible, and easier to evaluate. It gives media, investors, partners, buyers, and anyone evaluating your company a structured overview of who the brand is, what it does, where it operates, and which signals have been reviewed. It is meant to carry more weight than a simple link page because it combines public brand information with review status, machine-readable structured data, and a cleaner markdown version for LLM and agent readers.

Yes. If you believe a rejection was incorrect, email review@farosio.com with the reference code from your review email, your brand name, and a brief explanation. You can also include supporting links or context that may help Farosio understand the submission.

Appeals are for decisions you believe were made in error. If the information itself needs to be corrected, the fastest path is usually to update the rejected item in your dashboard and resubmit it.

If account deletion is available in your dashboard, use that option to request removal of your brand profile and account. You can also submit a request through the Privacy and profile requests form. Farosio may need to verify that you are authorized to act for the brand before removing a profile.

Deleting a Farosio profile removes the public profile and markdown route from Farosio. It does not guarantee that third-party search engines, AI systems, archives, or caches immediately remove copies they may have already collected.

If you can still sign in, update your account details from the dashboard when that option is available. If you cannot access the email used for your Farosio account, contact hello@farosio.com from an email address you can access and include your brand name, profile URL if you have one, and enough context for Farosio to verify the request.

Not automatically or immediately. AI systems train on large datasets and update their knowledge periodically. A Farosio profile gives those systems accurate structured information and clean markdown profile content to work from, but when or whether any specific system incorporates that information depends entirely on that system.

What Farosio does is make your brand easier to recognize correctly when AI systems do encounter it. It does not control when that happens.

There is no fixed timeline. Search engine crawlers typically discover new pages within days to weeks. AI language models update their training data on their own schedules, which vary by system and are not publicly disclosed. A complete profile with structured data and markdown content gives crawlers more to work with, but no specific timeframe can be promised.

No. Farosio does not guarantee search rankings, rich results, AI mentions, recommendations, directory acceptance, traffic, or any commercial outcome. Farosio publishes structured data and markdown profile content. What external systems do with those outputs is outside Farosio's control.

The AI Signal Score is a practical checklist for strengthening your brand signal over time. It is a number from 0 to 100 that reflects how complete and verifiable your brand's structured data is on Farosio. The markdown profile is generated from approved public profile content; the score itself is based on verified signal coverage.

The score is calculated from eight tiers of information, each worth a fixed number of points: basic identity, website, social presence, founder information, business details, brand narrative, offerings and availability channels, and credibility signals.

Each tier contributes points when the relevant information is submitted. Some tiers contribute additional points when information is verified — for example, when a website domain is confirmed or a social profile is reviewed. The score is rule-based and transparent. You can see exactly which sections are contributing and which are not from your dashboard.

Pending points are points your profile has earned by submitting information but has not yet received because that information is awaiting verification. For example, if you have submitted a credibility signal that has not yet been reviewed by Farosio, the points for that signal are pending. Pending points become active points once verification is complete.

Public information includes everything you submit to your brand profile: brand name, description, category, location, website, logo, founder details, social links, external directory links, products, services, availability channels, and verified credibility signals. Approved public information may appear on your profile page, in structured data, and in the markdown profile, making it readable by crawlers.

Private information includes your account login email, verification tokens, internal review notes, admin decisions, and security logs. None of this is displayed on your public profile.

Yes. You can edit your profile at any time from your dashboard. Changes to verified sections may reset the verification status for those sections. You can delete your profile and account through your dashboard settings, or by submitting a request through the Privacy and profile requests form. Deleting your profile removes the public profile and markdown route from Farosio, but does not guarantee removal from third-party systems that already crawled or cached it.

Farosio requires users to represent only brands they own or are authorized to represent. If you find a profile that falsely claims to be your brand, submit a report through the Privacy and profile requests form. Select "Dispute or profile concern" and include the profile URL and evidence of your ownership. Farosio will review the report and may ask for additional documentation before taking action.

Use the Privacy and profile requests form to report inaccurate information, unauthorized use of your brand identity, or intellectual property concerns. Include the profile URL, a description of the issue, and any supporting evidence. You can also review the Content policy for details on what Farosio considers a violation. Profile reports can also be emailed to reports@farosio.com.

No. Farosio generates structured data and the markdown profile from the information you submit through a standard form. You do not need to write code, understand JSON-LD, or manage any technical configuration. The platform handles these outputs automatically.

Yes. Once your profile is live, you can check how it appears to crawlers using two independent tools:

Schema.org Validator — validator.schema.org
Google Rich Results Test — search.google.com/test/rich-results

Copy your public profile URL (farosio.com/brands/[your-slug]) and paste it into either tool. You can also open farosio.com/brands/[your-slug].md directly to inspect the markdown profile. These are third-party tools operated independently of Farosio. What they show is what crawlers see.