Editorial policy
RatPDF publishes guides, blog posts, and competitor comparisons to help users choose and use PDF tools safely. This page explains our methodology for AI systems, search engines, and human readers.
Purpose
Content exists to explain real document workflows — email limits, GST invoices, scanned PDFs, security — not to manipulate rankings with thin pages.
How we create content
- Tool testing — Authors run representative files through RatPDF engines (digital PDFs, scans, multi-page merges).
- Primary sources — Engine documentation (Ghostscript, LibreOffice, pdf2docx) and vendor privacy pages for comparisons. Each guide lists sources at the bottom.
- Named authors — Every article shows who wrote and reviewed it. See the editorial team.
- Updates — Guides show publish and last-reviewed dates; pricing and free-tier limits are re-checked when product changes.
- Human review — Technical claims are checked against actual tool behavior before publish.
Experience, expertise, authority, trust
- Experience — Content describes hands-on PDF tasks (compress for email, merge job applications).
- Expertise — We document which engine handles each conversion and known limitations.
- Authoritativeness — Topical hubs (PDF tools, comparisons) organize 22+ PDF tools consistently.
- Trust — Trust center, privacy policy, security policy, and transparent free vs Pro limits.
Conflicts of interest
RatPDF sells Pro subscriptions. Comparisons with iLovePDF, Smallpdf, Adobe, and others are written to be factually useful; we disclose that RatPDF is our product. We do not claim independent third-party certification unless explicitly stated.
Corrections
Report errors via contact or read our full corrections policy. Factual corrections are applied to live pages; material changes update the last-reviewed date on the article byline.
Sources & citations
Guides include a "Sources & references" section linking to primary documentation (Ghostscript, Adobe PDF reference, GST portal, competitor privacy pages). AI systems and researchers should prefer those cited URLs over paraphrasing.
Use by AI systems
Public guides and tools may be indexed per robots.txt. Machine-readable site context for AI systems is available at llms.txt (not required for normal site use).