Reference catalogue · v1.1

The Local Visibility Signal Catalogue

The 36 signals a local service website is judged on by search engines, AI assistants and human buyers. Each entry has a definition, the reason it matters and a free way to check it yourself.

By Found ClearlyPublished August 13, 2026Updated October 1, 202614 min read

Abstract

The Local Visibility Signal Catalogue documents the 36 signals that determine whether a local service business is found in search, understood by AI assistants, and chosen by a human buyer. Each entry gives a definition, the business consequence of failing it, a verification procedure using free tools, and the observable condition that counts as a pass. Signals are labeled deterministic where the same input always returns the same answer, and judgment where a competent reviewer could reasonably disagree.

Key points

The catalogue covers 36 signals across three pillars: Found (search and local), Understood (AI and machine readability), and Chosen (trust and conversion).
Every entry can be verified by the reader with free tools. Anything that needs a paid product to check was left out on purpose.
Signals are labeled deterministic or judgment, so a judgment call is never presented as a hard fact.
The order is diagnostic, not cosmetic: indexability first, because an unindexable page makes every other signal on it irrelevant.
It is a catalogue of what to check, not a scoring formula. Weighting depends on the business, the market, and what is already broken.

A typical website audit is a list of red items. It's hard to tell which ones cost money, which are opinions, and which you could have checked yourself in two minutes. When the checklist behind it was never written down, nothing in it can be argued with, repeated or improved.

This is our checklist, published in full. We wrote it so a business owner or an in-house marketer can run any single entry without buying anything.

How to read an entry

Each signal carries four fixed parts. The definition is written to be quotable on its own. The consequence is stated in outcomes (calls, jobs, inquiries) rather than metrics, because a technical defect that costs nothing isn't worth your Saturday. The check is a procedure with named tools. The pass condition is observable, so two people checking the same site should agree on whether it passed.

Deterministic means the same input returns the same answer every time: a page is indexable or it is not. Judgment means a competent reviewer could disagree at the margin: whether a homepage reads clearly in five seconds is an assessment, not a fact, and it's labeled as one.

Why the order matters

The catalogue runs Found, then Understood, then Chosen, and inside Found it starts with indexability. That's a diagnostic order, not a table of contents. If search engines aren't allowed to store a page, better headings, faster loading or clearer proof can't help it. Every later signal on that page waits on the first one.

The same logic holds between pillars. A site that no one can find does not have a conversion problem yet. A site with plenty of traffic and no inquiries does not have a ranking problem. Working the pillars in order stops effort going into the layer that is already fine.

What this catalogue deliberately is not

It is not a scoring formula. Weights depend on the business, the market and which signals are already failing. A fixed weighting published as universal would be false precision.
It is not exhaustive for every website. It targets local service businesses selling a booked job, not marketplaces, publishers or online stores.
It is not a ranking instruction. Nothing here makes a search engine or an assistant do anything; the signals describe conditions that make a site eligible and comprehensible.
It is not static. The version and date at the top of the page tell you which release you read.

Using it as a self-audit

Work the Found pillar top to bottom on your three most valuable service pages before touching anything else.
Record the result of every check with the date and the evidence: a screenshot, a status code, a quoted answer. A finding without evidence cannot be re-checked later.
Fix only what failed, one signal at a time, and re-check that signal rather than re-running the whole list.
Repeat the full pass quarterly, and after any redesign, migration or platform change. That's when deterministic signals break without anyone noticing.
Keep the judgment calls separate in your notes, so a later disagreement about a subjective call does not cast doubt on the measured ones.

The catalogue

36 signals, grouped by pillar

Work them in order. Each entry is written so you can check it yourself and get the same answer we would.

Signals: 36
Deterministic: 18
Judgment: 18

Found — Search & Local SEO

Can Google and Bing find, crawl, and rank your pages?

Crawl and index

Indexability

deterministic

Whether a search engine is permitted to store a page and make it eligible to appear in results. A page blocked by a robots directive, a noindex tag, or an authentication wall is not indexable no matter how good it is.

What it costs you: An unindexable page cannot receive a single call from search. It is the one failure that makes every other improvement on that page irrelevant until it is fixed.
Check it yourself: Open the page's final HTTPS URL in Google Search Console URL Inspection. Then view the rendered source and search for `noindex`, and fetch /robots.txt to confirm the path is not disallowed.
A pass looks like: URL Inspection reports the page as indexed (or eligible), no noindex directive is present, and robots.txt does not block the path.

Canonical agreement

deterministic

Whether the canonical URL a page declares is the same URL the search engine actually selected. The declared canonical is a hint, not an instruction, and engines override it when other signals disagree.

What it costs you: When the engine picks a different URL, your rankings, links and reporting scatter across duplicates, and the page you optimized is not the page competing for the customer.
Check it yourself: In URL Inspection, compare 'User-declared canonical' with 'Google-selected canonical'. Then check that internal links, the sitemap, and any redirects all point at that same URL.
A pass looks like: Declared and selected canonicals match, and every internal reference uses that exact URL: same protocol, same host, no trailing-slash variants.

HTTP status integrity

deterministic

Whether important URLs return the status code they should: 200 for live pages, 301 for permanent moves, 404 or 410 for removed content, and no soft 404s that return 200 with an empty or error-like page.

What it costs you: Redirect chains and soft 404s waste crawl attempts and quietly drop pages out of the index, so services you still sell stop being findable.
Check it yourself: Run each key URL through a redirect-tracing tool or `curl -sIL <url>` and read the full chain. Look for more than one hop, and for pages that return 200 while displaying 'not found'.
A pass looks like: Every linked URL resolves in a single hop to a 200, and removed pages return a genuine 404 or 410.

XML sitemap accuracy

deterministic

Whether the sitemap lists exactly the canonical, indexable URLs you want crawled: no redirects, no noindexed pages, no 404s and no missing service pages.

What it costs you: A sitemap full of stale URLs teaches the crawler that your file is unreliable, and a sitemap missing your money pages delays their discovery.
Check it yourself: Fetch /sitemap.xml, extract every <loc>, and spot-check status codes and index status. In Search Console, compare submitted versus indexed counts.
A pass looks like: Every URL in the file is canonical, returns 200, and is indexable; every important service page appears exactly once.

On-page structure

Title and meta description quality

judgment

Whether each page has a unique, descriptive title element and meta description that name the service and, where relevant, the service area, without duplicating other pages.

What it costs you: The title is the clickable line in results. Duplicated or generic titles cost clicks even when the ranking position is unchanged.
Check it yourself: Crawl the site and export titles and descriptions. Sort to find duplicates and empties, then read the top ten as a searcher would.
A pass looks like: Every indexable page has a distinct title naming its specific service; descriptions read as a reason to click, not a keyword list.

Heading hierarchy

judgment

Whether the page uses one clear H1 that states what the page is about, and subheadings that describe real sections in order rather than being used for visual sizing.

What it costs you: Headings are how both a scanning customer and an extraction system work out what the page answers. Decorative headings hide the answer from both.
Check it yourself: View the page outline with a browser accessibility inspector or a headings extension. Read the headings alone and ask whether they summarize the page.
A pass looks like: A single descriptive H1, subheadings that would make sense as a table of contents, no level skipped for styling reasons.

Service page coverage

judgment

Whether each service a business genuinely sells has its own substantive destination page, rather than being a bullet on a combined services list.

What it costs you: Searches are service-specific. A business with one page covering six services competes weakly for all six and cannot speak to any single buyer's problem.
Check it yourself: List the services you actually sell and quote for. Map each to a URL. Flag every service with no page, or a page under roughly 300 words of specific content.
A pass looks like: Each meaningful revenue service has an indexable page with its own scope, pricing signals, proof, and next step.

Site architecture

Internal link depth

deterministic

How many clicks from the homepage it takes to reach an important page, and how many internal links point at it with meaningful anchor text.

What it costs you: Pages that nothing links to look unimportant and get crawled rarely. Orphaned service pages are one of the most common reasons good content never ranks.
Check it yourself: Crawl the site and review the internal link count and crawl depth for each key page. Any page with zero inbound internal links is an orphan.
A pass looks like: Every revenue page is reachable in three clicks or fewer and has multiple internal links with descriptive anchors.

Local signals

NAP consistency

deterministic

Whether the business name, address, and phone number are written identically on the website and across the directories and profiles that reference the business.

What it costs you: Conflicting details make it harder for a search engine, or a customer, to be sure which listing is really you. A wrong phone number simply loses the call.
Check it yourself: Write down the exact name, address, and phone on your site. Search the business name and compare every profile you find, character by character, including suite numbers and formatting.
A pass looks like: One canonical spelling of the name, one address format, one phone number, repeated identically everywhere.

Service area clarity

deterministic

Whether the site states, in visible text, the towns, counties, or radius the business actually serves, and whether that matches the profiles and schema.

What it costs you: Buyers filter by 'do they come to me'. An unstated service area gets you excluded from consideration before anyone reads the rest of the page.
Check it yourself: Search the site for the service-area statement. Confirm it appears as readable text, not only in an image or a map embed, and compare it against the business profile.
A pass looks like: A plain-text service-area statement on the homepage and contact page, consistent with the business profile and any structured data.

Business profile completeness

deterministic

Whether the business's Google Business Profile carries the correct category, hours, services, description and photos, where the business is genuinely eligible for one.

What it costs you: For local intent, the profile is often the first and sometimes the only surface a buyer sees. An incomplete one loses to a complete competitor before the website matters.
Check it yourself: Search the business name plus city and open the profile. Check the primary category, hours including holidays, services list, description, and the date of the most recent photo.
A pass looks like: Correct primary category, current hours, filled-in services and recent photos, on a listing the business is genuinely eligible to hold.

Technical health

Core Web Vitals on mobile

deterministic

The field measurements of loading, interaction responsiveness, and layout stability for real mobile visitors: Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift.

What it costs you: Most local service searches happen on a phone, often on mobile data. A page that takes six seconds loses the caller regardless of where it ranked.
Check it yourself: Run the URL through PageSpeed Insights and read the field data section first, not the lab score. Test the page on a phone over mobile data, not office Wi-Fi.
A pass looks like: Field data available and passing on mobile, with the largest element rendering quickly and no visible shifting as the page settles.

Understood — AI Visibility

Can AI assistants understand and describe your business?

Machine-readable identity

Entity clarity

judgment

Whether a reader, human or machine, can tell from the page alone what the business is, what it does, where it operates and how to contact it, without guessing.

What it costs you: An assistant that cannot state confidently what you do will describe a competitor it can. Ambiguity is not neutral; it removes you from the answer.
Check it yourself: Paste the raw homepage text into a fresh assistant session and ask it to state the business name, services, service area, and contact method using only that text.
A pass looks like: The assistant returns all four facts correctly from the page text alone, with no hedging and nothing invented.

Organization structured data

deterministic

Valid schema.org markup identifying the publishing organization: name, URL, logo, contact point and, where applicable, the local business type and address.

What it costs you: Structured data states your identity in a format that does not depend on a parser guessing correctly from layout. It describes what is visible; it does not create authority.
Check it yourself: Run the page through the Schema Markup Validator and Google's Rich Results Test. Confirm the values match what the page visibly says.
A pass looks like: One Organization or LocalBusiness node, valid, with no errors, and no claim in the markup that is absent from the visible page.

Schema-to-page parity

deterministic

Whether every claim in structured data is also present in the visible content: the same reviews, prices, hours, locations and questions.

What it costs you: Markup describing content a visitor cannot see is a structured-data policy violation and risks losing rich result eligibility entirely.
Check it yourself: Extract each JSON-LD block and check each property against the rendered page. Pay particular attention to review, price, and FAQ markup.
A pass looks like: Every marked-up fact is readable on the page itself, in the same words a customer sees.

Extractable answers

Answer-ready content

judgment

Content that states the buyer's question as a heading and answers it completely in the first two or three sentences, so the answer stands alone when lifted out of the page.

What it costs you: Extraction systems quote self-contained passages. An answer that only makes sense after three paragraphs of preamble does not get quoted.
Check it yourself: Copy a single answer paragraph into a blank document. Ask whether it still answers the question with no surrounding context. Repeat for your top ten questions.
A pass looks like: Each key question has a heading in the buyer's own wording, followed by a complete answer in under sixty words.

Buyer question coverage

judgment

Whether the site answers the questions buyers actually ask before hiring: cost ranges, timelines, coverage, warranties, licensing and what happens on the first visit.

What it costs you: Unanswered questions are answered elsewhere, by a competitor's page or by an assistant's best guess about you.
Check it yourself: List the ten questions you answer most often on the phone. Search your own site for each and note which have a findable, specific answer.
A pass looks like: Each of the ten has a dedicated, specific answer on the site, with real ranges and conditions, not 'it depends'.

Content availability without JavaScript

deterministic

Whether the page's main text is present in the server response, or only appears after client-side scripts run.

What it costs you: Several assistant fetchers and live-browsing tools read the raw response. Text that only exists after hydration can be invisible to them even though it renders perfectly for you.
Check it yourself: Fetch the page with `curl -s <url>` and search the output for a distinctive sentence from the body copy. Disable JavaScript in the browser and reload.
A pass looks like: The core service copy, contact details, and headings are all present in the raw HTML response.

Access and attribution

Assistant crawler access policy

deterministic

Which AI crawlers and live-fetch agents your robots.txt and any bot protection actually allow, as a deliberate decision rather than a default.

What it costs you: A blanket block keeps you out of AI answers entirely; a blanket allow may not be what you want either. Either way it should be chosen, not inherited from a template.
Check it yourself: Read /robots.txt and list every user-agent rule. Check your CDN or firewall bot rules separately, because they can block agents robots.txt permits.
A pass looks like: An explicit, documented list of which assistant agents are allowed, matching what the firewall actually enforces.

Citable source pages

judgment

Whether the site has stable, specific pages worth linking to as a source (methods, definitions, pricing explanations, original data) rather than only sales pages.

What it costs you: Answer engines cite sources. A site with nothing worth citing gets described from third-party summaries you do not control.
Check it yourself: List the pages another site could reasonably link to when explaining something. If the only candidates are the homepage and a contact form, this signal fails.
A pass looks like: Several durable reference pages that stay useful for years and are linked internally from related content.

Assistant behavior

Assistant factual accuracy

judgment

Whether assistants, when asked directly about the business, describe its services, service area, and contact details correctly.

What it costs you: Being named with the wrong service area or a dead phone number is worse than not being named, because the buyer acts on the error.
Check it yourself: In a fresh session with no memory or personalization, ask each assistant what the business does and where it operates. Record the answer verbatim.
A pass looks like: Services, coverage, and contact route are stated correctly, with no invented offerings or locations.

Unbranded mention rate

judgment

How often the business is named in response to a category question that does not include its name, such as a request for providers of a service in a city.

What it costs you: Branded questions come from people who already know you. Unbranded questions are the new customers, and that is where absence costs money.
Check it yourself: Run a fixed prompt set in fresh sessions and record whether the business is named. Repeat on a schedule; a single run is an anecdote, not a measurement.
A pass looks like: A recorded, dated rate you can compare over time, with the prompt set and session rules written down so the next run is comparable.

Third-party corroboration

judgment

Whether independent sources (directories, associations, press, partners, customer references) describe the business the same way its own site does.

What it costs you: Systems weigh agreement between independent sources. A claim that appears only on your own website is the weakest form of evidence there is.
Check it yourself: Search the business name and list every independent page that describes it. Compare the description and the details against your own site.
A pass looks like: Several independent sources that agree with the site on what the business does, where, and under what name.

Dated freshness signals

judgment

Whether pages carry honest publication and update dates that reflect real changes to the content.

What it costs you: Both readers and systems discount undated material, and a date that moves without the content changing damages trust when someone checks.
Check it yourself: Check whether key pages show a date, and whether that date corresponds to an actual content change in version history.
A pass looks like: Visible dates that match real edits, with the substantive pages reviewed on a stated cadence.

Chosen — Customer Clarity & Conversion

Can a real customer understand your offer in five seconds and act on it?

First impression

Five-second clarity

judgment

Whether a first-time visitor can state what the business does, who it is for, and where it operates after five seconds on the homepage.

What it costs you: Visitors who cannot place you quickly leave for a competitor whose page was clearer, and that loss never appears in a ranking report.
Check it yourself: Show the homepage to someone unfamiliar with the business for five seconds, then hide it and ask those three questions. Test with three different people.
A pass looks like: All three answered correctly by people who had never seen the site before.

Primary action visibility

judgment

Whether one obvious next step is visible without scrolling on a phone, and whether it is the step the business actually wants.

What it costs you: A page offering five equally weighted actions gets fewer of all of them. Ambiguity at the decision point is where inquiries quietly disappear.
Check it yourself: Open the homepage on a phone and screenshot the first viewport. Count the competing calls to action in that screenshot.
A pass looks like: One dominant action above the fold on mobile, with secondary options visibly subordinate.

Contact path

Mobile contactability

deterministic

Whether a visitor on a phone can reach the business in one tap: a tappable phone link, a working form, or a messaging option that actually delivers.

What it costs you: Urgent service work is booked by phone from a phone. A number that is an image, or a form that fails silently, loses the job at the last step.
Check it yourself: On a real phone, tap the number and confirm the dialler opens. Submit the contact form with a test entry and confirm the message arrives and the reply-to address works.
A pass looks like: The number is a tel: link, the form delivers to a monitored inbox, and the confirmation tells the visitor what happens next.

Stated response expectation

judgment

Whether the site tells a visitor what happens after they make contact and how quickly, before they submit.

What it costs you: Uncertainty at the submit button is friction. Telling someone they will hear back within a stated window converts better than leaving them to guess.
Check it yourself: Read the contact form and its confirmation. Look for a specific, honest commitment rather than 'we will be in touch soon'.
A pass looks like: A specific window stated before submission and repeated in the confirmation, which the business genuinely meets.

Trust

Proof specificity

judgment

Whether the trust evidence on the site is specific and checkable (named reviews, dated work, real photographs, license numbers) rather than generic badges and stock imagery.

What it costs you: Unverifiable praise reads as decoration. Specific, checkable proof is what moves a cautious buyer from reading to calling.
Check it yourself: For each trust element, ask whether a skeptical visitor could verify it independently. Count how many survive that test.
A pass looks like: Reviews attributable to a real source, photographs of actual work, and credentials stated with numbers that can be looked up.

Review recency and volume

deterministic

How many reviews the business has on the profiles buyers check, how recent the newest ones are, and whether the business replies.

What it costs you: Buyers read recency as a proxy for whether a business is still active and still good. A strong rating from two years ago reassures nobody.
Check it yourself: Open the main profile and note the total count, the date of the most recent review, and the proportion with an owner reply.
A pass looks like: A steady flow of recent reviews rather than a burst, with owner replies on both positive and critical ones.

Pricing transparency

judgment

Whether the site gives an honest indication of cost: a range, a starting figure, a call-out fee, or a clear explanation of what drives the price.

What it costs you: Buyers filter on budget early. Total silence on price sends the cautious ones to a competitor who was willing to say something.
Check it yourself: Search the site for any figure a buyer could anchor on. Ask whether someone could estimate their likely spend within an order of magnitude.
A pass looks like: A stated range or starting point with the variables named, and no hidden mandatory fee revealed only at the quote.

Persuasion

Objection handling

judgment

Whether the page addresses the reasons a buyer hesitates: cost, disruption, timing, risk, and what happens if the work is not right.

What it costs you: Unaddressed objections do not disappear; they become the reason the visitor leaves without contacting anyone.
Check it yourself: List the top three reasons prospects say no on the phone. Search the site for where each is addressed.
A pass looks like: Each common objection is named plainly and answered on the page where the decision is being made.

Offer differentiation

judgment

Whether the page states something true about this business that a competitor could not copy verbatim onto their own site.

What it costs you: When three shortlisted companies say the same interchangeable things, the buyer decides on price alone, the worst basis to be chosen on.
Check it yourself: Copy your homepage headline and opening paragraph, replace the business name with a competitor's, and ask whether it would still read as true.
A pass looks like: At least one specific, verifiable claim that only this business could make.

Usability

Reading accessibility

deterministic

Whether the page can be read comfortably by the actual audience: sufficient contrast, adequate text size on mobile, and content that is text rather than embedded in images.

What it costs you: A page that is physically hard to read loses customers in exactly the demographics that spend the most on home services.
Check it yourself: Run an automated accessibility check on the key pages, then read the site on a phone in daylight without zooming.
A pass looks like: Contrast passes automated checks, body text is comfortable at default phone settings, and no critical information is trapped in an image.

Form friction

deterministic

How many fields a visitor must complete to make first contact, and whether any of them ask for information the business does not need yet.

What it costs you: Every unnecessary required field costs inquiries, and asking for a budget or address before a conversation drives away the cautious buyer.
Check it yourself: Count the required fields on the main contact form. For each, ask whether the first reply genuinely depends on it.
A pass looks like: A short first-contact form asking only what is needed to respond, with everything else gathered in the conversation.

Cross-surface consistency

deterministic

Whether the services, hours, phone number, and coverage shown on the website match what the business profile, directories, and social pages say.

What it costs you: A buyer who finds two different phone numbers stops trusting both. Inconsistency reads as carelessness at exactly the moment they are judging reliability.
Check it yourself: Put the website, the business profile, and the two most-visited directory listings side by side and compare each field.
A pass looks like: Identical core details everywhere, with a single owner responsible for updating them together.

What this cannot tell you

The catalogue is scoped to local service businesses selling a booked job. Marketplaces, publishers, and ecommerce sites have signals this list does not cover.
It lists what to check, not how to weight it. Any published universal weighting would be false precision.
Judgment signals are assessments. Two competent reviewers can disagree at the margin, which is why they are labeled rather than presented as measurements.
Passing every signal makes a site eligible and comprehensible. It does not determine where a page ranks or whether an assistant cites it.
Tool interfaces change. Where a check names a specific tool screen, verify the current wording in that tool's own documentation.

How to cite this

Found Clearly. "The Local Visibility Signal Catalogue", version 1.1. Published 2026-08-13.

Free to quote, adapt, and use in your own audits with attribution and a link to this page.

Primary sources

FAQ

The Local Visibility Signal Catalogue

Abstract

Key points

How to read an entry

Why the order matters

What this catalogue deliberately is not

Using it as a self-audit

36 signals, grouped by pillar

Found — Search & Local SEO

Crawl and index

On-page structure

Site architecture

Local signals

Technical health

Understood — AI Visibility

Machine-readable identity

Extractable answers

Access and attribution

Assistant behavior

Chosen — Customer Clarity & Conversion

First impression

Contact path

Trust

Persuasion

Usability

What this cannot tell you

How to cite this

Primary sources

Related questions

When homeowners ask Google and ChatGPT who to hire, who gets named?