Methodology

How UptickIQ works

UptickIQ answers one question: when a customer in your market goes looking, do they find you — or someone else? Here is exactly what we measure and where every number comes from.

We scan your market, not just your website

Most SEO tools read your website and stop. UptickIQ starts there, then goes where your customers actually are: the search results, the map pack, the review profiles, and the directories for your market. We run the real searches people in your area type, record who shows up, and measure the distance between you and the businesses winning those searches.

The six pillars of competitive visibility

• Search visibility — we run the searches your customers run and record where you appear. Not estimated positions: actual results, captured at scan time.
• Google Maps — for local markets, the map pack decides who gets the call. We check whether you appear, whether your profile is claimed, and how you compare with rivals.
• Reviews — review count and rating versus the market, plus what customers actually praise and complain about across your competitors' reviews.
• Directories — the listing sites that rank in your market, and whether you are on them.
• Authority — who links to your site, with junk links identified and discounted instead of counted as credit.
• Site performance — real page-speed measurements of the site experience your visitors get.

A score that refuses to guess

Every pillar reports one of three states: measured, not applicable to your market, or unknown. If we could not verify something, the report says so — it never fills the gap with an estimate. A national software business is not graded on Google Maps; a plumber is. When there is not enough verified data to score responsibly, we show you what we found and no score at all. We think a missing number is more honest than an invented one.

Then the gap becomes a plan

The scan ends with a prioritized action plan: what to fix on your site, which pages to create for the searches you are losing, and what to do beyond your website — reviews, listings, links. You can download it as a printable plan for a human, or as a file written for an AI assistant so the tool that builds your website gets clean, measured context instead of guesswork.

Fix things, then re-scan your site and watch the numbers move. Your full report includes a verification re-scan — see what a report costs or read how to read your report.