What "Verified" Actually Means on This Site

The default is honest: unverified

Every part in the catalog starts from an honest baseline: unless a part explicitly carries a Verified badge, treat its listed price, weight, and specs as a reasonable sample estimate rather than a confirmed fact. That's not a hedge to avoid liability — it's a direct statement of how much confidence to place in that row's numbers. A part with no badge hasn't been checked against a manufacturer source yet; it might be accurate, but nobody has confirmed it.

What actually earns the badge

A part only earns Verified status when three things are true at once: it's explicitly marked verified, it carries a real source URL, and it carries a checked-on date that isn't in the future. All three have to be present together — a part can't claim to be verified while pointing at no source, and it can't backdate or postdate the check. This isn't a cosmetic label; the catalog's own data validator enforces it and refuses to accept a verified claim that's missing any of the three.

Not all sources are treated equally

Where the source data actually comes from matters too. A source is tagged as one of a small number of types: a manufacturer's own product page, a manufacturer's own published document (like a spec-sheet PDF), an independent measured weight from a credible third party, or a general retailer listing. Manufacturer sources and credibly measured weights can support a Verified badge. A plain retailer listing cannot — a part cannot be marked Verified resting only on a retailer's page, because retailer listings are known to sometimes carry copied, rounded, or simply wrong numbers that didn't originate with the manufacturer.

Why "measured" exists as its own category

Some manufacturers — most notably Shimano, and virtually all rotor makers regardless of brand — simply don't publish component weights on their own product pages, even though they publish everything else about the part's specs and interfaces. Waiting indefinitely for a manufacturer weight that will never appear would leave large, mainstream, and otherwise well-documented parts stuck as permanently unverified. So the catalog accepts a reputable third party's actual measured weight as sufficient — but only for the weight figure specifically, and only when it comes with its own separate, checkable source link. The part's interfaces and other specs still have to trace back to the manufacturer; only the weight gets the measured-source allowance, and it's flagged distinctly from a manufacturer-sourced weight so the distinction stays visible in the data itself.

What Verified doesn't promise

A Verified badge is a statement about where the listed numbers came from, not a guarantee that the part will never change or that the manufacturer's own page is perfect. Manufacturers revise, discontinue, and supersede models over time, and a verified row can be explicitly marked as superseded by a newer generation's row when that happens, so the catalog's history stays traceable rather than silently overwritten. A Verified badge also says nothing about compatibility — whether a part fits with the rest of your build is a completely separate question the compatibility checker answers on its own, covered in the how-the-checker-works guide.

Using the filter

If you want to shop only from confirmed specs, the catalog includes a Verified-only filter that narrows the list down to exactly the parts carrying that badge today. That's a genuinely useful way to build with maximum confidence in the numbers, but it will necessarily exclude a large share of the catalog — most parts, including plenty of real, correctly-specced ones, simply haven't gone through the verification process yet. An unverified part isn't presumed wrong; it's presumed unconfirmed.

How BuildMyMTB enforces this

• Verified requires all three fields: the verified flag, a working source URL, and a checked-on date that isn't in the future — the data validator rejects a part claiming verified status without all three.
• Retailer sources can't support Verified: a part sourced only from a retailer listing cannot carry the Verified badge, even if every other field is present.
• Measured weights are a distinct, narrower allowance: a credible third-party measured weight can support Verified status for the weight only, and requires its own separate source link — it doesn't extend to the part's other specs.
• Lifecycle stays traceable: a superseded part can point at the row that replaces it, so history isn't lost when a manufacturer updates a model.

Practical takeaways

• Treat any unbadged part's specs, weight, and price as a reasonable estimate, not a confirmed fact — worth a quick check yourself before you buy, especially if the compatibility checker is leaning on that number.
• A Verified badge tells you where the data came from; it says nothing about whether the part fits the rest of your build — that's the compatibility checker's separate job.
• Use the Verified-only filter if you want to shop from confirmed data exclusively, understanding it will show you a smaller slice of the full catalog.
• A part being unverified today doesn't mean it's wrong — it means nobody has checked it against a manufacturer source yet.