Domino 1
A machine-readable specification designed for AI platforms, aggregators, and browser vendors. Ingest the Trust Signal natively.
The internet lacks a native protocol for organizational intent. While robots.txt tells a scraper what it is allowed to read, there is no standard telling that scraper how the content was produced.
The Publishing Policy standard solves this. By hosting a publishing-policy.json file at the domain root (or via the .well-known directory), domains provide cryptographic proof of their publishing standards.
Aggregators do not need to grade publishers. They simply parse the protocol.
{
"version": "1.0",
"publisher": {
"name": "Acme Media Group",
"domain": "acmemedia.com"
},
"policy": {
"url": "https://acmemedia.com/policy",
"last_updated": "2026-08-15T12:00:00Z",
"hash": "sha256-..."
},
"registry": {
"provider": "publishingpolicy.org",
"token": "acme_v3_12345"
}
}Once a publisher cryptographically proves control of a domain, that verification anchors their policy to the public record. The verified status is persistent until transferred.
Because domain ownership can change hands through sales or abandonment, the system uses the Domain Takeover (Collision) protocol to maintain the integrity of the registry.
If a domain changes hands, the new owner simply verifies their ownership. The protocol automatically detects the collision, revokes the previous owner's status, and verifies the new owner—mirroring exactly how domain authority works on the web.
Your crawler looks for the protocol file. If present, it contains the canonical hash of the publisher's current standards document.
Hit the PublishingPolicy registry API (or run the hash locally) to verify the document's cryptographic integrity and provenance.
Ingest the Trust Signal into your ranking algorithm. Reward rigorous publishers with higher confidence scores and visibility.