Every link
has a meaning.

01 / Relationship semantics

Capital. Control. Operations.

Majority owned by / Subsidiary of

Evidence supports a controlling ownership relationship. Exact percentages can remain undisclosed.

Operated by / Portfolio company of

A verified operating or portfolio connection. Alone, this does not disclose a complete legal ownership chain or establish a majority stake.

Minority investment from

An investment without established control. The investor is not promoted to ultimate controller.

Franchise of

A commercial franchise relationship. The franchisor’s owner is not presumed to own the franchisee.

DBA of

A recorded business-name relationship. The underlying legal entity remains distinct from the brand name.

Pending / provisional / historical

An announced, unresolved or former connection. It is excluded from established-control traversal.

02 / Evidence states

Confidence, without false precision.

Documented

The finding has supporting public evidence at the stated observation date. It is not a probability, an audited cap table, or a guarantee of present ownership.

Self-reported

Ownership is described by the business itself. Independent control verification is incomplete.

Incomplete chain

One or more ownership questions remain unresolved, partial, conflicting or pending. A verified platform relationship can coexist with an unknown ultimate controller.

Source grades A / B / C

Grades describe the underlying evidence quality. Primary filings, sponsor or transaction-party announcements receive more weight; independent reporting can corroborate. Weak discovery leads do not become ownership proof.

Publisher groups track independence. Five copies of a transaction press release remain one underlying evidence group.

03 / Entity resolution

Resolve names. Preserve identities.

Each brand, legal entity, operating platform, sponsor and franchise system has a stable entity ID. Normalized names and aliases help retrieve candidates; they do not automatically merge businesses.

Exact name or alias matches can resolve one entity, multiple candidates, or no entity. Ambiguous matches remain ambiguous. Brands, DBAs, local operators and holding companies retain separate records connected by evidence-backed edges.

Validation rejects duplicate IDs, dangling relationships, missing evidence, invalid transaction targets, cyclic control paths and slug collisions. Franchise, minority, operating and portfolio links are excluded from the established-control graph.

04 / Time & revision

Keep yesterday’s finding.

The original Austin snapshot is 2026-07-26. The current release is 2026-10-23. Each source and relationship retains its observation date; transactions preserve announced and close dates separately, including month-only precision.

Corrections apply through reviewed revisions with a hash of the previous assertion, a reason and cited sources. Before and after values remain available in the exported assertion history. A source-health check does not reverify ownership or advance an observation date.

The review interval is 90 days. A record’s review flag is based on its oldest chain observation, not merely the newest website access. Ownership can change before that interval.

05 / Publication standard

Useful pages, supported by evidence.

Company profiles enter the sitemap only when the brand is active, documented, supported by at least two public sources including a primary ownership source, and linked to an entity relationship. Incomplete and self-reported profiles remain accessible with noindex directives.

Entity profiles are indexable only when at least two active researched brands connect to the entity and at least two public sources include primary evidence. This gate limits thin pages; coverage and specific relationship scope remain explicit.

06 / Contribute evidence

Improve the record.

A useful correction names the company or relationship, provides a public source and date, and explains what should change. Company requests alone do not override documented evidence.

Send a correction through Sulayman’s public contact profile . Include the source and proposed change. The website does not collect or store form entries.