The Fabrication Study: Graders That Score a Page They Never Fetched.
A dated, reproducible look at how the industry's free SEO graders return a "grade" for pages they demonstrably could not have read. The method is here; the anonymized evidence is attached to the published study.
Give a Grader a Page It Cannot Have Read. See If It Grades Anyway.
Submit a URL behind a block, or one freshly created — a page no crawler could have fetched in time to analyse it.
Record whether the tool returns a numeric grade, letter, or checklist for content it had no way to read.
Run the same URL through an instrument that reports the block honestly. The gap between the two is the finding.
Anonymized Captures — Naming Withheld Pending Approval.
By default the evidence is anonymized: the reproducible method stands on its own, and we render no legal conclusion about any named grader. Naming is a deliberate decision, not a default.
Anonymized capture: a grader returning a score for an unreadable page. Attached with the published, dated study.
Side-by-side: the same URL, read honestly — the block reported, no score invented. Attached with the published, dated study.
Studies & Measured Data
What Separates Page-One Local-Service Sites
Our flagship data study — measured on real sites, not guessed. The on-page signals top-ranked pages share more than the bottom (a privacy-policy link leads), the exact sample size, and the honest curiosities. Read the study →
What Is a Page-One Ranking Worth?
A dated, sourced study of what page one is worth — click-through rate by position, where the clicks concentrate, and what one position is worth in visits and leads. Read the study →
Is Your Website Visible to AI?
A technical guide to the reach → read → cite chain — the crawlers to know, what earns a citation, and how to check your own site today. Read the guide →
Why Doesn’t ChatGPT Recommend My Business?
An ordered diagnosis of a silent absence — does an assistant know you, can it reach and read you, is there anything to extract, and does the wider web vouch for you — with free checks you can run today. Read the diagnosis →
What AI Overviews Did to the Click Curve
Three named, dated studies on how AI Overviews change the click — laid side by side by what each actually measured, with how to read any CTR claim and a free way to check your own exposure. Read the study →