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 total built up from 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
Technical checks are deterministic — the same input gives the same result every time — so they're 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: consistent name, address & phone (NAP), service areas & Google Business Profile
- 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. Every audit asks real assistants a set of buyer questions and records what they said on that date. AI answers change constantly, so we keep that sample out of your core score and show it separately — clearly labeled with the date. That way your score never swings just because an AI model had a different day.
Your Google Business Profile works the same way: when we have checked your listing, the report shows a dated set of factual listing checks (status, website link, phone consistency, hours, reviews) as its own block — never inside the three pillar scores. Listing data comes from Google and is labeled with the date it was checked.
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 judgment-based estimates as measured facts.
- • We don't invent history or trends.
Found Clearly is a website visibility consulting and implementation firm. 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.