Issue 35 · · sent to our list
Five minutes, free, no developer. Then what 2,597 measurements told us.
It is almost never your website. It is that your business describes itself three different ways across its own sources, and the engine cannot work out which one is true. Here is the fix, then the data behind it.
`` [Business name] is a [what you actually do] in [suburb or city], helping [who you help] since [year]. ``
Coastline Dental is a family dental practice in Buderim, caring for Sunshine Coast families since 2009.
Why identical matters. An engine does not look you up in one place. It gathers what your sources say about you and checks them against each other. Three sources using the same words reads as confirmation, so it names you. Three sources using different words reads as doubt, and a doubtful engine names a competitor it is more certain about.
When we run a scan we ask all seven answer engines the questions your buyers actually type, and we keep every answer word for word. We also cross-check your identity against the government business registry. That is why we can show you the mismatch instead of guessing at it. It usually looks like this.
YOUR GOOGLE PROFILE SAYS "Innovative service provider for modern business"
YOUR HOMEPAGE SAYS "Family owned and operated since 1998"
YOUR DIRECTORY LISTING SAYS "Trading name of a company deregistered in 2019"
SO CHATGPT SAYS "I don't have reliable information about that business."
Nothing there is a website problem. Every one of those sources is fine on its own. Together they make you a business no engine is confident enough to recommend, which is how one in four of the businesses we measure end up effectively absent at the exact moment a customer asks for someone to call.
2,597 MEASURED | 7 ENGINES ASKED | 3 REBUILDING NOW
The sentence fix above takes five minutes and anyone can do it. The rest of the list is where it stops being easy. Most businesses we measure sit on WordPress, Wix or Squarespace, and those platforms genuinely did their job for a decade.
But when the fix is structured data an engine can read, or pages shaped like answers instead of brochures, the work turns into hunting for a plugin, then a second plugin to patch the first, then a developer to untangle both. The fix is an afternoon of work. Delivering it through somebody else's interface is a fortnight.
Several people asked us to build integrations so the fixes land automatically inside WordPress. We thought about it and said no.
A plugin for a dying platform is just a more comfortable way to stay inside an interface built for somebody else's business.
Owning the thing is cheaper. A custom build with your own internal tools costs less than three years of licences and the hours spent working around them, and every fix we hand you afterwards becomes a five minute change instead of a project.
Three businesses are rebuilding with us on exactly that basis right now. Not websites. Websites plus the business systems and lead systems underneath, built so an engine reads the business as clearly as a customer does. We launched expecting to sell reports. This turned out to be the better business.
See what the seven engines say about you
Free scan, 60 seconds, no signup.
I read every reply to this one myself, and I answer them. If your scan comes back ugly, forward it to me and I will tell you the first thing I would fix. No charge, and no pitch attached to it.
Huxley
Noosa, Queensland