Do all five stages always run?

Not always. An engagement can stop after assessment if the work would not justify what it would cost you, or if the situation is already resolving on its own. Proactive work can skip intervention and begin at construction.

Why is there a review gate between every stage?

Because each stage produces information that can change whether the next one is a good idea. A gate is an opportunity to stop, which is only meaningful if stopping is genuinely available. It is, at every gate, with no penalty.

What does the baseline document actually contain?

Every relevant URL with its position and publication date, a dated capture of its contents, the autocomplete predictions across regions, and verbatim AI answers to a standard question set. It is the reference point every later claim of improvement is measured against, including by you.

How do you report progress?

Against the original baseline, on the agreed cadence, including the measures that have not moved. A report that only contains improvements is a sales document rather than a report.

The fee is stated in a written proposal before any work begins, scoped to what the assessment finds. The section above sets out how that figure is arrived at.

The method

Five stages, with a gate between each one.

The same method runs every engagement, which is what makes it possible to audit. Each stage has defined inputs, a specific deliverable, and a review point at which stopping is genuinely available.

Every matter is genuinely different, which is exactly why the method is written down rather than improvised. A documented sequence is what makes a month of work possible to evaluate, because you can see what should have happened and what you should have received.

That solves a specific problem. If a stage's deliverable has not arrived, something has gone wrong, and you are in a position to ask about it precisely rather than generally.

The gates matter more than the stages. Each one is a genuine decision point where the engagement can end without penalty, because we would rather lose a month of fees than continue work our own assessment says will not produce a result.

The stages

What happens, in what order.

Assessment

One to two weeks

Establishing what is actually there, dated and in writing, before anything is touched. The full assessment is scoped and quoted in a written proposal before it begins.

Inputs

Your account of the situation and its history
Names, entities, and aliases in scope
Any prior remediation attempts and their outcomes

You receive

A baseline document: every relevant result, source, and machine-held assertion, with position, date, and a capture of contents. Plus our reading of what can and cannot be changed.

The gate tests

You decide whether to proceed. If the assessment shows that intervention would not help, the process stops here.

Sequencing

Days

Deciding the order. This stage is short and it determines most of the outcome.

Inputs

The assessment baseline
Your constraints: legal exposure, transaction timing, confidentiality requirements
Coordination with your counsel where a legal dimension exists

You receive

A written plan: which mechanisms apply, in what order, with what expected timeline and what we explicitly are not attempting.

The gate tests

Written approval of the plan, including its stated limits, before any external action is taken.

Intervention

Weeks to months

The removable material first, because removal is usually the most durable change.

Inputs

The approved sequence
Evidence packages assembled per counterparty
Your approval on any external correspondence sent in your name

You receive

Requests made, tracked, and reported, including refusals, which are reported as they happen rather than aggregated at the end.

The gate tests

A checkpoint on what succeeded and what did not, and an honest reassessment before moving to construction.

Construction

Months

Building the material that carries weight: structural foundation first, then published work.

Inputs

Entity definition and structured data on properties you control
Your genuine standing on the subjects being written about
Your sign-off on every word published under your name

You receive

A resolved entity, consistent representation across sources, and substantive published work correctly attributed to you.

The gate tests

Position and answer measurement against the original baseline, not against a new one.

Verification

Ongoing

Confirming that what changed stayed changed, including in systems that update silently.

Inputs

The original baseline document
The agreed monitoring cadence and escalation threshold
The standing AI question set, re-run each cycle

You receive

Scheduled reports measured against baseline, stating what improved, what did not, and what we recommend next.

The gate tests

Your decision each cycle on whether the standing engagement continues. Month to month, always.

Fees

You will know what the work costs before you commit to any of it.

The sequence is the same in every engagement. A first conversation, then a preliminary review at no charge that establishes what is actually there and what is worth doing about it. Where there is, you receive a written proposal for the full assessment, with its scope, fee, and deliverable stated. The assessment then establishes what is actually there, and a second proposal scopes any intervention to what it found. No paid work begins at either stage before you have agreed to that document.

There is no price list and there are no packages, because scope only becomes clear once the assessment is done. A figure offered by phone before the facts are established would be a guess, and guessing is the opposite of what you would be hiring us for.

Questions we are asked

Do all five stages always run?: Not always. An engagement can stop after assessment if the work would not justify what it would cost you, or if the situation is already resolving on its own. Proactive work can skip intervention and begin at construction.
Why is there a review gate between every stage?: Because each stage produces information that can change whether the next one is a good idea. A gate is an opportunity to stop, which is only meaningful if stopping is genuinely available. It is, at every gate, with no penalty.
What does the baseline document actually contain?: Every relevant URL with its position and publication date, a dated capture of its contents, the autocomplete predictions across regions, and verbatim AI answers to a standard question set. It is the reference point every later claim of improvement is measured against, including by you.
How do you report progress?: Against the original baseline, on the agreed cadence, including the measures that have not moved. A report that only contains improvements is a sales document rather than a report.
What does this cost?: The fee is stated in a written proposal before any work begins, scoped to what the assessment finds. The section above sets out how that figure is arrived at.

Start at stage one.

An assessment tells you what exists and what can realistically be changed. It is also the stage at which many engagements correctly end.

A first conversation Or write to us directly

The first conversation and the preliminary review that follows it are free, and nothing is owed afterwards.

Whether your situation calls for a lawyer is one of the most common questions we are asked, and it is usually settled in the first conversation. Where counsel should be involved we will say so and work at their direction, and where it is not a legal matter we will tell you that too. Either way, the question is ours to answer rather than yours to work out first. How we hold information