The questions that come up most.
Click any question to expand. Written from the questions Lance answers most often in inbound email. Updated when a new question comes up enough times to qualify.
What if I do not have a competitor list yet?
We help build it in the scoping call. Bring three to five obvious competitors. The first measurement run surfaces additional firms AI cites for your category through the cohort-coverage scan. Most categories grow from 5 named competitors to 20-40 tracked firms within the first run.
What if my business is not in Hawaii?
The methodology works for any geography. Today the published teardowns are all Hawaii-based because Hawaii is where the first measurement seeds happened. The 7 AI tools we measure are global. The question set and cohort are tuned to whatever geography and category you scope at the start.
What if AI tools change during the engagement?
AI tools refresh their indices and training data on schedules outside our control. When a change is large enough to materially shift the measurement (new AI tool version, indexer update, etc.), we flag it in the monthly memo as a methodology note. The hash-locked question set stays the same so we can still compare runs across the change.
Can you measure multiple categories?
Yes. Per category, not per client. Each category is a separate $4,500 kickoff + $1,500/month line. Most customers start with one category and expand. If your business has practice areas buyers search for separately (retirement planning, business owners, real estate investors, etc.), each can be its own measurable category.
What does the scoping call cover?
30 minutes. You answer five buyer-shape questions about how your customers actually search. We draft 18 buyer questions in the 8-head + 10-long-tail shape we use across categories. You review the draft, request edits, and lock the set. The set never changes after lock. That is how every run compares apples to apples. See /methodology/#query-set for an example locked set.
When does the first research memo arrive?
Three weeks after the scoping call (assuming the locked question set lands within 4 days of scoping). Daily measurement runs for 21 days across all 7 AI tools, then the memo synthesizes the accumulated data. We have not yet shipped a kickoff memo late.
What does success look like, and how fast?
By day thirty you have the baseline and the punch list: where AI names you, where it names competitors instead, and the fixes ordered by impact. From there the work is your team’s, and we measure whether it moves every month, with drift alerts when a competitor shifts. We do not hand you a vanity timeline. We hand you observable movement. Hawaii Theatre Center went 45 to 95 in ten days once their team shipped the list, before and after both measured by us. You will always know whether it is working, in numbers you can re-run yourself.
What is the cancellation policy?
Monthly. Cancel any month with 30 days’ notice. The kickoff is non-refundable once measurement begins. The ongoing $1,500/month is pay-as-you-go. We do not require annual commitments. We would rather lose the renewal than keep a customer who is not getting value.
Is there a free way to try the methodology first?
Two. The instant self-serve check at check.neverranked.com tells you what 7 AI tools can read from your site. The hand-built 1-page diagnostic (email Lance@hi.neverranked.com) runs 5 real customer questions for your category across all 7 AI tools and sends a 1-page snapshot showing which competitors AI is naming and whether you are one of them. One diagnostic per business.
Do you do the work or just measure?
We measure. We do not execute. We do not write content, edit pages, deploy schema, update profiles, or change your site. Your in-house team or your agency executes against the punch list we deliver. That separation is structural and is the whole position. It also means we never compete with your agency for execution hours.
How does the agency channel work?
Channel pricing is built for reselling and scoped on a call, not published here. Agencies mark up to the end client and capture the senior-time savings as additional margin (about 20-40 senior hours per month recovered across 5 clients). We do not contact agency clients directly. If clients reach us, we route them back to the agency. See /for-agencies/ for the full channel terms.
Do you sign NDAs and MSAs?
Yes. Mutual NDAs are standard. We have a short preferred template and will sign yours within reason. MSAs we sign with one standard redline (uncapped indemnification capped to engagement value. Uncapped is existential risk for a small firm). See /security/ for the full vendor-questionnaire posture.
Will my data be used to train AI models or sold?
No. Your raw measurement data is yours, exportable any time, lives in your customer data store. Aggregate cross-category patterns (the kind that show up in our cross-category teardown) stay anonymized and are never reverse-engineerable to a specific customer. We do not train models on your data and we do not sell your data to anyone.
What happens if my firm is in a public teardown’s cohort?
If your firm appears in one of our public teardowns, it is named only at the cohort-aggregate level (counts, distributions) and anonymized at the firm level (no firm-specific data tied to your name). The only exception is the Hawaii consumer banking teardown, where the 21-bank cohort is named in full because all 21 are publicly competing brands and the methodology demonstration value comes from naming. If you object to anonymized inclusion, email takedown@neverranked.com and we will remove your firm from the cohort within 24 hours.
How is this different from an SEO audit or an AEO tool?
An SEO audit measures search engine ranking factors on your own site. We measure what AI tools actually cite when buyers ask category-shaped questions. An AEO tool (dashboard-style) gives you a self-serve product to log into and interpret yourself. We deliver a research memo plus a prepped punch list your team executes. The deliverable is the difference: we hand off interpreted findings, not raw data. See /vs/ for the structural comparison.
Why spend this on AI visibility instead of more ads or local marketing?
We are not asking you to drop local marketing. Reviews, Maps, and reputation still matter. AEO reaches a different moment: the buyer who asks AI "who is the best [category]" before they ever open a map, and takes the three names it gives them. For a considered purchase, that shortlist is the whole game, and today you cannot even see the answer that left you out. We measure the one surface no ad budget shows you. And if your buyers do not research before they buy, we are the wrong spend, and we will tell you so.
Are you a software company or a consulting firm?
Neither. We are a research practice. The product is the recurring research output (memos, punch lists, drift detection, monthly cadence). The software underneath (the measurement pipeline, the aggregator, the fail-closed grader) exists to make the research repeatable. It is not sold as a self-serve product. See /about/ for the long version.
Who am I actually working with?
Lance Roylo, in Honolulu. The measurement, the cohort decisions, the memo writing, and the customer relationship are all the principal’s work. There is no account layer between you and the person doing the research. See /about/ for context.
What if the methodology produces a finding that is wrong or stale?
Flag it. Email Lance@hi.neverranked.com with the specific claim and what you think is wrong. The fail-closed factual grader is built to catch unsubstantiated claims before artifacts ship, but it is heuristic and has gaps. The public teardowns have been refreshed multiple times as cohort coverage improved. That kind of public self-correction is part of the discipline.