Methodology
How we score your visibility
Trust comes from transparency. Here's exactly how the Found / Understood / Chosen scores are built — and what they do and don't mean.
Principles
What every score rests on
Evidence before scores
Every score is a rollup of specific checks we run against your site. You can always see the underlying evidence — what page, what we found, why it matters. No black box.
Scores are banded, not falsely precise
Each pillar is 0–100 and grouped into Critical, Weak, OK, or Strong. We don't pretend a site is exactly '73.4% optimized' — the band tells you where to focus.
Stable and reproducible
Scoring weights are versioned and stored with each audit. Run the same site twice and you get the same scores within a couple of points. Re-audits use the same version, so before/after comparisons are honest.
Confidence is labeled
Deterministic technical checks are high-confidence. Judgment-based checks are medium-confidence and flagged as such. We never present an estimate as a hard fact.
No invented history
Your first audit is the baseline. We never fabricate past data or a trend line you didn't earn — your history starts the day we first measure it.
The three pillars
What each pillar measures
Found
Search & Local SEO
- Crawlability, indexability, sitemaps & robots
- Titles, headings, and on-page structure
- Local signals: NAP, service area & Google Business alignment
- Page speed and core technical health
- Schema / structured data coverage
Understood
AI Visibility
- Entity clarity: who you are, what you do, where
- Explicit services & service-area content
- Answer-ready, citable content structure
- Structured data AI systems can parse
- Technical access for AI crawlers
Chosen
Customer Clarity & Conversion
- 5-second clarity: what you do, for whom, where
- An obvious primary action (call, form, booking)
- Trust signals: reviews, proof, credentials
- Mobile conversion & form friction
- Pricing / quote path clarity
AI visibility: readiness vs. measured
The Understood score measures your website's readinessfor AI — the structure, clarity, and signals AI systems rely on to understand and describe a business. Because it's computed from your own site, it's stable and reproducible.
Whether a specific tool like ChatGPT or Perplexity actually mentions you is a separate, live measurement. AI answers change constantly, so we keep that data out of your core score and show it separately — clearly labeled with the date — only once monitoring is connected. That way your score never swings just because an AI model had a different day.
What we don't do
- • We don't guarantee Google rankings or positions.
- • We don't guarantee AI tools will cite or mention you.
- • We don't promise a specific number of calls or leads.
- • We don't present heuristic estimates as measured facts.
- • We don't invent history or trends you didn't earn.
Found Clearly is a diagnostic and implementation service. Scores are evidence-based estimates, not guarantees. We do not promise Google rankings, AI citations, traffic, calls, leads, or revenue. Results vary by site, market, and competition.