About
Evidence grades
Three labels, one on every page, saying whether a claim is documented by the platform, held by practitioners, or genuinely a guess. The grade is required, and a page can't build without one.
A description of our own grading system, enforced by rules G4 and G12 in the build and specified in SPEC.md section 4.
Search advice circulates with no indication of what's known and what's guessed. Tone won't help you — the most confident writing in this field is often the least supported.
So every page here carries one of three labels, and the build won't publish a page without one.
What do the evidence grades on this site mean?
Documented means a platform states it in its own documentation and we link to the source. Practitioner consensus means it's widely held and reasoned but no platform has confirmed it. Speculative means it's plausible but genuinely unsettled, or it's asserted in the field with no evidence.
Every page carries exactly one grade and one line explaining why it got that grade. The build fails if either is missing, and fails if a page claims documented without citing anything.
Documented
The platform says it, in writing, in its own documentation, and we link to it.
Most of technical SEO sits here: Core Web Vitals thresholds, sitemap and robots limits, crawler names and what each one controls, Google's position on AI-written content. These are facts about published rules. They change, which is why every page carries a check date.
Practitioner consensus
Widely held by people who do this work, backed by reasoning and observation, confirmed by no platform.
Most of AEO and on-page sit here. That topic clusters build authority. That answering first helps you get quoted. That entity consistency matters. All reasonable, all consistent with how these systems seem to behave, none of it published by anybody.
This is the biggest category. Labeling it honestly is the main thing separating this site from the material it's reacting to.
Speculative
Plausible but genuinely unsettled, or going around the industry with nothing behind it.
AI crawler access is graded speculative in full, because nobody knows how engines will treat those controls over time. So is the claim that unlinked mentions carry weight with AI engines. So is the assertion that Glassdoor sentiment is becoming an E-E-A-T factor — a claim whose only support is that somebody wrote it down and others repeated it.
Speculative doesn't mean wrong. It means if you act on it you're placing a bet, and you ought to know that you are.
Why it's a build requirement
Because an optional label gets skipped on exactly the pages that need it most.
Somebody confident about a claim doesn't reach for a hedge. Making the grade mandatory forces the question on every page, including the ones where the honest answer is uncomfortable. That's where the value is.
Two rules enforce it. No grade or no reason, no build. Claiming documented with no sources, no build.
More in About
Editorial policy
Who writes it, who checks it, how we use AI, what stops a page going out, and how often we come back to it.
What we sell
The library is free. The audit is the paid product. Nothing here is sponsored and there are no affiliate links, which is why a recommendation on this site is just a recommendation.
Myths & unverified stats
The most-quoted numbers in search marketing can't be traced to anybody who measured them. Here's why none of them are on this site, how to check one yourself, and the claims we refuse to repeat.
How this site is built
The stack, the rules that stop a bad page going out, and an honest list of what we haven't checked. If the site is the argument, this is where you go to test it.
Privacy
No analytics, no cookies, no trackers, no third-party requests, and no form wired to any endpoint. The on-site search runs in your browser. This page explains how to verify all of that rather than take it on trust.
Contact
How to reach the people who publish this site, and an honest note about why the address is not printed here yet.