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Source Finding

Find trustworthy sources for a product or growth question (official docs and policies, real data, real users, then articles), search them efficiently with search operators, and record each source with a date and a confidence level. Use when researching a market, a store rule, a competitor or a pricing question, when someone asks "where do I find data on X", "is this still true", "find sources for", or before writing any skill, plan or decision that depends on facts.

Beginner⏱ 30-45 min📂 researchv1.1.0

In 30–45 minutes you will have 5–10 sources for one question, ranked by how much you can trust them, each with a link, a date and a one-line summary.

Goal

Answer questions with evidence you can point to, not with the first blog post Google shows. Know which source wins when two disagree.

When to use

  • Before a decision that depends on facts: a price, a store rule, a market's size, a launch channel.
  • When a "fact" you found has no date or no source.
  • Not for: finding what users say about software → research-where-users-ask. Storing what you find → research-doc-organization.

Inputs

  • One clear question, written as a sentence. ("What is Apple's commission on subscriptions for a new small developer?")
  • Why you need it, and how exact the answer has to be.

The source ladder (trust top to bottom)

Level What Examples
1. Official The platform or company that makes the rule App Store Review Guidelines, App Store Connect Help, Play Console Help, Chrome Web Store docs, pricing pages
2. Data Numbers you can check yourself Google Trends, store charts and search autocomplete, your own analytics, public company reports, revenue directories that pull numbers straight from the payment provider (e.g. TrustMRR)
3. Real users What people actually say and do Reviews, forums, Reddit, Hacker News, communities → research-where-users-ask
4. Practitioners People who did it and share numbers Indie Hackers posts, founder blogs, conference talks, industry reports that show their method
5. Articles Summaries by others Blog posts, listicles, AI answers. Use them to find level 1–4 sources, never as the final source

When sources disagree, the higher level wins. When sources on the same level disagree, the newer one wins.

Steps

  1. Write the question and its "good enough" bar (5 min). Exact number? A range? Yes or no?
  2. Go to level 1 first (10 min). Search the official site directly: site:developer.apple.com subscription commission.
  3. Use search operators (10 min).
  4. site:reddit.com "alternative to notion": search one site.
  5. "exact phrase": only pages with that phrase.
  6. intitle:pricing / inurl:changelog: words in the title or URL.
  7. filetype:pdf "state of": reports.
  8. before:2026-01-01 / after:2025-06-01: limit by date (Google).
  9. -word: exclude results.
  10. Competitors' revenue, the verified way. On TrustMRR every profile has a plain-Markdown twin at trustmrr.com/startup/<slug>.md (revenue for 30 days / 12 months / all time, provider, price, founder's X followers). Find slugs by keyword in trustmrr.com/startup-sitemap.xml. It rate-limits bulk downloads (HTTP 429), so fetch one page every second or two. Revenue someone posts on Reddit or X is self-reported: level 4, not 2.
  11. Which keywords a competitor targets. Open <their-site>/sitemap.xml and look at URL patterns: /vs/<rival>, /alternatives/<rival>, /uses/<task>, /<format>-to-<format>. The pattern is their SEO plan; the URL count shows how hard they work it.
  12. Check every source (5 min). Who wrote it? When (no date means low trust)? Is it first-hand? Does a second source agree?
  13. Record it (5 min). For each source: link, date published, date you checked, level (1–5), and a one-line summary. Use assets/sources-template.md from research-doc-organization.
  14. Write the answer with confidence. High (level 1–2, two sources agree), medium (level 3–4, or one source), low (level 5 only, or sources disagree). Say which one it is.

Prompt (copy-paste)

Replace everything in {{ }}. Works best in an AI assistant with web search turned on.

You are a careful research assistant. Answer this question with sources I can verify.

Question: {{one sentence}}
Why I need it / how exact: {{...}}
Region / platform / date that matters: {{e.g. US App Store, as of this month}}

Rules:
- Rank sources: 1 official (the platform or company itself), 2 data, 3 real users, 4 practitioners with numbers,
  5 articles. Prefer level 1-2. Use level 5 only to find better sources.
- For each source give: title, link, publish date, level, and a one-line summary of what it says.
- If you can't find a source for a claim, say "no source found". Never invent a link or a number.
- End with: the answer, confidence (high / medium / low) and why, and what would change the answer.
Also give me 5 search queries (with operators like site:, "", intitle:, before:) I can run myself.

Example output

Illustrative example. Shows the format. Check the current numbers yourself before relying on them.

Question: What does Apple take from a new indie developer's subscription revenue?

# Source Level Published / checked Says
1 App Store Small Business Program page 1 — / 2026-09-30 15% for developers under $1M proceeds a year
2 App Store Review Guidelines 3.1.2 1 2026-06 / 2026-09-30 Subscription rules; no rate
3 r/iOSProgramming thread "SBP approval took 2 days" 3 2026-03 / 2026-09-30 Enrolment is quick in practice

Answer: 15% if you enrol in the Small Business Program (otherwise 30%, dropping to 15% after a subscriber's first year). Confidence: high (two level-1 sources).

Common mistakes

  • Trusting AI answers or listicles as the source. They are level 5. Follow them to the original.
  • No dates. Store rules and prices change every year. A source without a date is a guess.
  • Stopping at the first answer that matches what you hoped to find.
  • Keeping sources in browser tabs. Tabs disappear. Write them down (step 5).

Credits

Written by @nvminhtu. Search operators from Google Search Help ("Refine web searches").