How it works
What we measure, and how far you should trust it.
A report is only useful if you know where its numbers come from and what it does when it does not know something. This page is both.
Sources
Everything we check is public.
We look at what a patient or client could see, from the outside. Nothing here needs your passwords, your practice software or any information about the people you look after.
- Your website
- We load your home page the way a visitor’s browser would and read what is there: titles, headings, contact details, the structured details search engines look for, and whether AI crawlers are allowed in. Speed is measured with Google’s own PageSpeed tool, several times, because a single run is unreliable.
- Google Search and Google Maps
- We run the searches a person near you would make and record where you and your competitors appear, in the ordinary results and on the map.
- Your Google Business Profile
- We read your public listing: categories, hours, services, photos, rating and review count. We see what a patient sees. We do not need access to the account to check it.
- Directory listings
- We look up your practice on the listing sites that matter in your field and compare the name, address and phone number on each with the ones on your site and profile.
- AI assistants
- We ask AI assistants the kind of question a patient would ask, such as who to see for a given problem in your town, and record whether your practice is mentioned.
Scores
Two scores, and what goes into each.
Both run from 0 to 100. They answer different questions, so they are never averaged into one.
Visibility: are you being found?
| Local rankings | 30% |
|---|---|
| Reviews, mostly volume, partly rating | 30% |
| Directory listings | 15% |
| Google Business Profile presence | 15% |
| Mentions in AI answers | 10% |
This score moves with the market. A competitor who improves can lower it without you changing anything, which is exactly why it is worth watching.
Health: is it set up right?
| Website | 45% |
|---|---|
| Google Business Profile completeness | 20% |
| AI readiness | 20% |
| Name, address and phone consistency | 15% |
This score is entirely in your hands. Every point lost corresponds to a specific item on your fix list.
Parts that could not be measured are left out and the rest is re-weighted, so a missing reading never drags a score down. The weights above are scoring version vh-1.0 and will be updated here if they change.
When we do not know
The rules the report follows when a reading is missing.
Automated audits have a habit of turning their own failures into your problems. These four rules exist so that ours does not.
Not measured is not zero
If a check could not be completed, the report says not measured. It is left out of your score. It never becomes a low number, and it never becomes a finding.
Could not reach is not broken
Some sites block automated visitors or time out. When that happens the report says we could not reach your site. It does not say your site is down, empty or broken, because we do not know that.
A change needs two measurements
We only report that something went up or down when it was measured both last month and this month. One missing reading means no claim.
A fix is confirmed by a scan, not by us
When a fix is made, it is marked done. It is marked confirmed only when the next scan stops detecting the problem. If the scan could not measure that area, the fix stays unconfirmed rather than being waved through.
Limits
What this does not tell you.
Search results differ by location, device and person. We search as someone in your town would, the same way each month, so the trend is reliable even though no single reading is what every searcher sees. Someone two streets from a competitor may see a different order.
We track five searches on Pulse and Care and fifteen on Plus. That is a sample of how people look for you, not all of it.
We do not measure phone calls, bookings or revenue, and we do not claim to know how a change in visibility affects them.