This page documents where every kind of information on this site comes from, how listings are built, and the limits of the data. It is written so that a reader can check any figure themselves.

Sources and licences

How listings are built

• Individual records and aggregate statistics are kept separate. Business counts, enrolment totals, population projections and property medians are published on information pages. They are never published as listing records.
• Scope is set by geography, not by guesswork. A record inside the Point Cook locality boundary is labelled In Point Cook. A record outside it but within a set radius of the suburb centroid is labelled Nearby suburb. We do not infer that a service covers Point Cook from proximity, so we do not use a Serves label unless the source says so.
• Records from overlapping sources are deduplicated by name, address, phone and coordinates. Genuinely separate branches and campuses are kept as separate listings, and where two sources described the same venue the records were merged and the weaker duplicate removed.
• Each imported listing carries a Source and Verification note with the source, licence, collection month and a statement that the record has not been owner-verified. Source verification, ownership verification and payment status are kept separate: appearing in a public dataset is not ownership verification, and paying for a placement is not verification either.

Limits you should assume

• OpenStreetMap records are community-mapped, not a complete census. Absence from the directory does not mean a business does not exist.
• Missing values are blank or shown as not available. They are not zeros.
• Distances are straight-line distances from a stated reference point. They are not driving, walking or travel times.
• School zone data is a bounding-box approximation, not an exact catchment. Zones can change. Use the official Department of Education findmyschool tool for catchment questions.
• Crime data is published by the Crime Statistics Agency at local government area level only, so Wyndham, Hobsons Bay and Melbourne rates are LGA figures and not suburb measurements.
• Census rents are a 2021 snapshot, not current advertised rents. Sale medians describe properties that sold, and are not valuations.
• Population projections are planning estimates, not observed outcomes.
• Approved childcare places are licensed capacity, not current vacancies.
• Opening hours and contact details from open datasets can be out of date, so a collection date is shown with each imported record.

What is deliberately withheld

The composite livability scorecard held in our source data is not published. Its weights, normalisation and inputs have not been independently validated, and we will not present a generated score as an official ranking. School zone geometry is also withheld because the geometry we hold is approximate.

Corrections and removals

Corrections are free. See the Suggest a Correction page. If a listing is about you or your business, you can also ask for it to be updated or removed.

Attribution

Data is used under the licences listed above. Contains data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (CC BY 4.0), the Victorian Government via DataVic and agency sites (CC BY 4.0), Wyndham City Council (CC BY 2.5 AU), ACECQA, the Department of Health (GEN aged care data), and OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

Feature image credits

Blog feature images are Creative Commons or public domain photographs from Wikimedia Commons, reused under their licence terms with attribution and without modification. Every image is also credited in its alt text on the article.

Two notes on the image set. The childcare and schools images are illustrative topic photographs rather than pictures of Point Cook services. Every other image is a genuine Point Cook photograph from a local contributor. If an image is ever replaced, its credit is updated here at the same time.