Docs/Verification & the Verified Badge

Verification & the Verified Badge

How a place earns the Verified badge, how long it stays current, and how to re-check a stale one.

StudentSuite Team · 2026-10-27 · 2 min read

Every place on the map starts unverified - it exists because a contributor sourced it, not because anyone has physically confirmed it recently. The Verified badge is StudyMap's way of surfacing which listings someone has actually re-checked, and how recently.

What the badge means

A green badge with the check date, next to the pin

A place shows the badge only while its verification is inside the expiry window:

12 months for libraries, airports, government offices, and other places.
6 months for SAT centres and foreign language exam centres - these change more often (centres open, close, or stop offering an exam between sessions).

Once a verification is older than its window, the badge disappears on its own - nobody has to remember to remove it. The place stays on the map either way; it just reads as unverified until someone checks it again.

Pick a stale or unverified place

Oldest or never-verified is most valuable

Any place without a current badge is fair game. A place that has never been verified, or one whose badge is close to expiring, is more useful to check than one that was just verified last week.

Check it against Google Maps (or in person)

Address, entrance, and open status

Confirm the address and entrance still match what's on the map, and that the place is still open and operating. If anything has actually changed - name, address, permanently closed - that's a correction, not a verification; say so in the issue instead of confirming stale data.

File a "Verify a place" issue

One small form, no pull request needed

Open a Verify a place issue with the place's id (from its dataset entry, or the map's share link), the date you checked it, and what you found. A maintainer then adds the verified block to the record and the badge appears.

Found something wrong, not just stale?

That's a correction, handled differently from a re-verification

If the place has moved, closed, or the listing is just wrong, open a regular issue describing the correction (or a pull request editing the record directly) instead of a verification - see Contributing Places. Verifying is for confirming a listing is still accurate, not fixing one that isn't.

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