OLFACT

Methodology

What we know,
and where we get it from.

A perfume page mixes very different kinds of information: what the house publishes, what we could not check against the house, and what we write ourselves. OLFACT keeps them apart, and says which is which.

Three kinds of information

Never mixed, always labelled

  1. From the house

    Official information

    Notes, concentration, release year and gender as published by the house or its official shop. A page with no label is one whose composition comes from the house.

    On the page: no label.

  2. Not checked

    Unofficial sources

    For some perfumes we could not reach the house’s own data. Rather than present it as certain, we flag it. The composition, and the year and gender shown, may then contain discrepancies.

    On the page: an “Unofficial sources” tag above the pyramid.

  3. Written by OLFACT

    Editorial analysis

    Descriptions, comparisons, “similar perfumes”, guides and Observatory statistics are our own reading of the composition. They are analysis, not data supplied by the house, and they inherit the limits of the composition they rest on.

    On the page: our wording, never attributed to the house.

Sources

Where the data comes from

  • The houses. Their official sites and shops: notes, concentration, year, gender. We record facts, never the houses’ own wording.
  • Our partner merchants. Product feeds give us names, concentration, gender and licensed photos. Some links are affiliate links, always disclosed: see the legal notice.
  • OLFACT itself. Descriptions are written by us from each composition. Illustrations of notes and guides are created for OLFACT. Where a perfume has no photo, we draw a scent signature from its real accords.

What we do not do

  • We do not copy another site’s database, nor texts from brands or competitors.
  • We publish no star rating, no review and no vote count that does not exist. When user ratings exist, they will be shown as such.
  • We do not fill a page with invented notes to make it look complete. A perfume with no known composition stays a short page, and is not offered to search engines.

In numbers

What the catalogue contains today

5,982
perfume pages
1,980
with a recorded composition
762
compositions from the house
1,218
flagged as unofficial (62% of compositions)

These figures are recalculated from the catalogue. Every percentage in the Observatory is computed on the perfumes with a recorded composition, not on all pages.

Limits to keep in mind

  • The catalogue is not the market: it covers the perfumes we have listed, not every perfume that exists. Trends read from it are indicative.
  • Because part of the compositions is unofficial, statistics by decade, by family or by house may be skewed. We say so wherever it applies.
  • We replace unofficial compositions with the house’s own, one house at a time. The tag disappears when the page has been checked.

Spotted a mistake?

Every message is read. Write to us with the perfume and the source, and we will correct the page.

Write to us See the Observatory