Guide

How to read your report

Your report has a lot in it. This guide walks through each section in plain English, and tells you what to do first.

The two scores, and why they differ

Site quality grades the website itself — content, technical health, structure. Competitive visibility grades how findable you are in your market — searches, maps, reviews, directories, authority, performance. A beautiful site can be invisible, and a plain site can dominate its market. Seeing both numbers separately is the point: it tells you whether your problem is the site or the presence.

When a pillar says "unknown" or has no score

UptickIQ never guesses. If a pillar could not be verified — a review profile we could not confirm is yours, a market where maps do not apply — the report says exactly that instead of inventing a number. If too little could be verified to score responsibly, you will see an explanation instead of a score. That is deliberate: an honest "we don't know" beats a confident wrong answer.

If your score is capped

Some situations cap the score no matter how clean everything else is — a one-page site, or a site where most pages are thin. The amber note under your score explains the cap and what lifts it. The category grades below it still show you the quality of what exists.

Your Move: the finding list

Each finding shows the severity, the evidence we captured, and the exact fix. Work top-down — the list is sorted by impact. Every finding is measured from your live site at scan time; the evidence block shows you precisely what we saw.

Search opportunities: pages to create, improve, or merge

These come from the searches your market actually types. When we say a topic needs its own page, it is because a page can win roughly one search topic — a mention buried on your homepage does not rank. The report tells you which existing page to improve, which topics deserve a new page, and which overlapping pages to merge.

Head-to-head comparisons

A comparison runs your competitor through the same engine, on your rules. Both sides are measured identically — where a pillar could only be verified for one side, it is excluded from both totals so the comparison stays fair.

Take your plan with you

Two downloads: a printable action plan for a person, and a version written for an AI assistant. If an AI tool builds or edits your website, upload that file to it — the tasks arrive with the evidence and context the AI needs to do them properly.

After you fix things: re-scan

Your full report includes a verification re-scan within 30 days. Fix what the report found, run it again, and confirm the score moved. That loop — measure, fix, verify — is the whole product.

Still stuck on something in your report? Contact us — a person reads every message.