We grade the whole local market. Then ourselves against it.

To know where we actually stand

No map results on any of our six searches, one blue link at position six.

August 2

Completed our profile links

What we expected

Make the business easier to identify

What actually moved

AI readiness rose from 67 to 77. No sign yet of more customers.

After the July fix

Kept blaming the Google category

We had already fixed it

Six weeks on the list. Nothing moved, because there was nothing left to correct.

July

Fixed our Google category

What we expected

Better rankings

What actually moved

No ranking improvement recorded since.

July 18

Put the scoring on a schedule

Numbers nobody can massage

The reading has run every Sunday since, without a miss.

July 17

Published an llms.txt

Help AI tools understand the business

Added 20 points to the AI readiness score. No Google change established, and Google says it does not use the file.

July 16

Stopped our host scrambling our email

Let assistants read how to reach us

September 24, 2026
Charted / Method

AI readiness contact points went to 10 of 10.

03 / Still not working

A better score isn't a customer.

This is the part we have to earn next. We keep the gaps in public beside the improvements.

VISIBILITY

Missing from all six map results.

We ran the six searches our own business should show up for. In the map results we appear for none of them. In the ordinary blue links we appear once, at position six. Read the measurement.

DISCOVERY

24 pages Google had never fetched.

Found September 17. Our own www address served a duplicate of the site until September 11, and Google spent its visits there instead. The duplicate is fixed and the pages are queued for a fresh look.

THE SCORE'S BLIND SPOT

0 of 25 ranking points.

Ranking is worth 25 of the 100 Google readiness points. We score 0. The other 75 points say we are ready to rank, not that we do.

04 / The latest reading

A checkpoint.
Not a victory lap.

Measured October 4, 2026, automatically, and published whatever it said.

Google readiness

69/ 100 Market average34

How ready your site is for Google to find and understand it: pages in the sitemap (20 of 20), business details Google can read (20 of 20), titles and descriptions (15 of 15), page weight and speed (7 of 15), crawl basics (15 of 15), address and area (15 of 15). Those 92 of 100 count for three quarters of the score, then live ranking adds up to 25. 92 x 0.75 + 0 = 69.

AI readiness

77/ 100 Market average25

How ready your business is to be named in an AI answer: llms.txt file (20 of 20), business details AI can read (20 of 20), answers to buyer questions (12 of 20), a plain email and phone (10 of 10), profile links (15 of 15), and whether assistants actually name us (0 of 15). 20 + 20 + 12 + 10 + 15 + 0 = 77.

Worth knowing: 20 of those AI points come from an llms.txt file. Google says its search does not use these files today. We keep one because it costs nothing to maintain and some AI tools already read it, so the points are readiness, not proof anyone is reading it.

05 / Open notebook

How the number is made.

Fetch the pages.

A small program on a weekly schedule reads this site and checks what search engines can see.

Use the same rules.

Our site and 6 nearby competitors are scored against the same list.

Save the reading.

Every Sunday the result is written to a table. Nobody types the number in by hand.

Publish it.

Up or down, it goes on this page, and the changes we made go in the notes below.

06 / The entries

The notes behind the work.

Each entry is a dated change to this site and what happened next.

What a directory listing is worth to a local business

We list Narrows Web Co. on Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, Clutch and more. Here is what each kind of listing does for you, which ones link back, and why we traded a link for a spot on DesignRush.

September 19, 2026
Charted / Method

One site, one address

If your site answers at both www and the bare domain, search engines can index two copies and crawl each one less. Here is the ten second check.

September 18, 2026
Charted / Method

The order a page should be in

Price early. Proof before the ask. One closing step. Here is the order we build a trades homepage in, and the reason for each block.

September 17, 2026
Charted / Method

A page per service. A page per town. Price on the homepage.

Every service gets its own page. Every town gets its own page. The price is on the homepage and our client work is linked from it, so you can go and look instead of taking our word.

September 12, 2026
Charted / Method

The one Google setting that decides which searches you can win

Your primary category tells Google which searches you are even eligible for. It takes a minute to check. Here is how, and what ours said.

September 5, 2026
Charted / Method

Reviews move the needle this year. Here is how we build them.

We measure our own search results the way we measure a client's: run the searches, write down what is there, then work the part that can change this year.