Short guides for small-business owners, on search questions where the search engines’ own answer is worth knowing. Each one quotes Google or Bing directly, links to the page it quotes, and gives the date we read it. Where a guide gives our opinion, it says so.
Quoted, linked and datedOur opinions labelled as oursNo rankings promised
The order a useful audit works in, what every finding should carry, what no honest audit can promise, and a checklist you can hold anyone to, including us.
Google’s own advice on hiring an SEO: the questions it suggests you ask, the warning signs, and why no one can guarantee a ranking. With our answer to every question.
Eight AI platforms, each with its own robots and its own rules. Which of them decide whether ChatGPT, Google’s AI features, Copilot, Perplexity and others can see your site, with a free check.
Who qualifies for a profile, the three things Google says local results are based on, names, categories, the review rules, and what can get a profile suspended.
What this Search Console status means in Google’s words, when it is normal, the usual causes on a small site, and what not to spend money on.
How these are written
When a guide tells you what Google or Bing says, it quotes them wherever it can, and every page a guide rests on is listed at its foot with the date we read it. We don’t present a tool vendor’s score, or an industry rule of thumb, as if it were a search engine’s rule. When the documentation is silent on something, the guide says so. And nothing here promises a ranking, a date or an AI mention: nobody can honestly promise those.