Arc F • Quarterly Reality Check • Part 2 of 2
The Report Looks Great.
Did Anything Happen?
Google names rank-checking by scraping Search as a spam policy violation. It is also how a lot of monthly ranking reports get made.
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Last Friday covered the claims made before you sign. This one covers the twelve months after, which is where most of the money actually goes and where almost nobody looks closely.
Three things to examine: the numbers in the monthly report, the work being done to produce them, and the document you agreed to. All three come from primary sources again, and Google's spam policy page was last updated on August 28, less than a week before this publishes.
Metrics That Move Without Anything Happening
A vanity metric is not a fake number. It is a real number that moves independently of whether your business is better off, which makes it the perfect thing to put in a report you need to look productive.
The test is simple and worth applying to every line: if this number doubled next month, would I be able to tell from the bank account? Sorted that way, most reporting divides cleanly.
| Commonly reported | Why it flatters | Ask instead |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | Rises when you appear for terms nobody clicks | Clicks, and from which queries |
| Keyword rankings | Easy to pick terms already close to page one | Which of those terms produce inquiries |
| Total sessions | Bot traffic, referral spam, and staff visits all count | Sessions that reached a contact or booking page |
| Social followers | Grows with posting frequency alone | Referral traffic and inquiries from social |
| Pages published | Measures activity, not outcome | Which pages entered search and brought anyone |
| Third-party authority score | Invented by the tool vendor, not by Google | See the section below |
None of the left column is useless. Impressions genuinely help diagnose a visibility problem, and rankings tell you something. The failure is when they are the whole report, presented as the outcome rather than as instruments for finding one.
About That Authority Score
Google published a dedicated page on third-party SEO tools and advice, and it addresses the metric that anchors a great many agency reports.
- Google does not evaluate these services
- Google states that it does not evaluate third-party services, and advises being wary of claims, and of those making them, that what a tool does is somehow acceptable or approved by Google Search.
- The data is not Google's
- Google notes that some third-party services provide data that users misinterpret as coming from Google, and says plainly that third-party tools do not have access to its internal ranking data.
- Predictions are the vendor's own
- Such tools cannot guarantee performance, and any predictions are their own which, like predictions generally, may not happen. Using a service or tool does not guarantee ranking success.
- Advice should cite its basis
- Google's stated test for external SEO advice is that good advice either qualifies claims as opinion based on data or experience, or backs up claims by citing official Google Search guidance.
- Google recommends its own free tool
- Whether or not you use a third-party tool, Google strongly encourages using Search Console, which provides key information and data directly from Google Search itself.
So an authority or difficulty score is a vendor's estimate, computed without access to Google's ranking data. That can still be useful for comparing pages against each other. It is not a measurement of how Google sees your site, and a report built around moving that number is reporting on the tool rather than on your business.
“A metric that cannot get worse is not a measurement. It is a decoration with a chart attached.”
Tactics Google Names Outright
Last Friday established the asymmetry: Google says you are ultimately responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, and that sites violating its policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. So it matters what is being done in your name.
The uncomfortable part is how many of the practices Google names are sold as routine deliverables.
- Named as spam Rank tracking that scrapes Google. Under machine-generated traffic, Google includes scraping results for rank-checking purposes among automated access conducted without express permission, and states such activities violate its spam policies and the Google Terms of Service. Worth knowing before you accept a ranking report as the centerpiece of your reporting.
- Named as spam City pages that funnel to one destination. Google's doorway abuse examples include having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page, and creating substantially similar pages closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy. This is close to a verbatim description of a very common local SEO package.
- Named as spam Paid links that pass ranking credit. Google's link spam list covers exchanging money, goods, or services for links, low-quality directory or bookmark links, widely distributed footer or template links, and advertorials or guest posts where payment is received for articles containing links that pass ranking credit.
- Named as spam Bulk AI content published to fill a calendar. Scaled content abuse covers generating many pages primarily to manipulate rankings rather than help users, and Google names using generative AI tools to generate many pages without adding value for users as an example. The tool is not the violation. Volume without value is.
- Depends entirely Location pages, guest posts, and AI-assisted drafting. Each of the four above has a legitimate version. Genuinely distinct location pages with real local information are not doorway abuse. A guest post without paid ranking links is fine. AI used to help write something substantive is fine. The line is intent and value, which is why the question to ask is always what the page does for a reader.
- Explicitly fine Paying for advertising links, qualified properly. Google says it understands buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship, and that such links do not violate its policies as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute. The attribute is the whole difference.
Google's policy circumvention provision covers continuing to violate policies through new subdomains, subdirectories, or sites, and says it may respond by restricting or removing eligibility for search features and taking broader action, such as removing more sections of a site from results. An agency that responds to a penalty by moving the work to a new domain is escalating your exposure, not resolving it.
The Contract Questions That Decide What You Keep
This is the least technical section and probably the most valuable, because the terms below determine what you walk away with if the relationship ends badly. They are far easier to settle before signing than after.
Term and exit
- Initial term, and whether it renews automatically
- Notice required to cancel, and the window it falls in
- Whether cancellation carries a fee or accelerates payments
- What happens to work in progress
- Whether a pause is possible short of termination
What leaves with you
- A written transition process on termination
- Export of analytics history, not just current access
- Site files and database in a usable form
- Removal of the agency from every account, on request
- Confirmation nothing is hosted on infrastructure you cannot reach
The Quarterly Review, in Four Questions
How many inquiries came in, and where did they come from?
Not sessions, not impressions. Actual calls, form submissions, and bookings, attributed as well as your setup allows. If this cannot be answered, fixing that is the first project, because every other judgment about the spend depends on it.
What specifically was done, and can I see it?
A list of pages published, changes made, and links earned, with URLs. Vague summaries of strategy and optimization are not deliverables. Google's hiring guidance frames this as expecting a provider to share the changes they make and the reasoning behind them, which is a fair standard to hold anyone to.
Does anything here match a practice Google names?
Run the deliverables past the list above. Near-identical city pages, bulk directory submissions, purchased guest posts with keyword-rich anchors, a sudden burst of thin pages. You do not need to be an expert; you need to have read the spam policies once, and they are free.
If I left today, what would I keep?
Ask it as a live question rather than a hypothetical, and check the answer against the accounts. Log into your registrar. Confirm you are the owner on your Google Business Profile. Verify you can reach Search Console without asking anyone. A quarterly check takes ten minutes and is the cheapest insurance in this post.
What Arc F Adds Up To
Two Fridays, one argument. The claims made before you sign can be checked against what Google publishes, and a guarantee of rankings fails that check immediately. The work done after you sign can be checked the same way, against a spam policy page that is free to read and names most of what goes wrong. And the contract can be checked before either matters.
None of that requires technical expertise. It requires reading three public documents once and asking for specifics, which is a lower bar than the industry's complexity usually implies. That is the whole quarterly reality check.
The same disclosure we asked for last week applies to us.
EveryCentCounts sells digital presence management, so treat this post as a standard we are inviting you to hold us to as readily as anyone else. Ask us what was done and see the URLs. Ask what happens if you leave. Ask which claims cite official documentation. We review existing agency arrangements and reporting for Virginia small businesses against what Google actually publishes, and sometimes the answer is that the current provider is doing fine. Book a consultation to have an agreement or a monthly report reviewed.
What Comes Next
Digital Friday continues next week, and the financial side opens Arc 5 on year-end planning, where the argument is that September is the month the useful work happens and December is the month it is too late. Between them, the two halves of this quarter have been making the same case from different directions: check the thing you are paying for against a source that has no stake in the answer.
EveryCentCounts
Financial Services & Digital Presence Management — Ladysmith, VA
EveryCentCounts provides digital presence management, web design, and local SEO services to Virginia small businesses and nonprofits alongside its accounting practice. Digital Friday returns next week.
References
- Google. “Spam policies for Google web search.” Google Search Central documentation, last updated August 28, 2026. developers.google.com. Source for the statement that sites violating the policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all, and that violations are detected through automated systems and human review that can result in a manual action; for machine-generated traffic including scraping results for rank-checking purposes and other automated access conducted without express permission, and the statement that such activities violate the spam policies and the Google Terms of Service; for the doorway abuse examples of multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page and substantially similar pages closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy; for the link spam examples including exchanging money, goods, or services for links, low-quality directory or bookmark links, widely distributed footer or template links, and advertorials or guest posts where payment is received for articles with links that pass ranking credit; for the statement that buying and selling links is a normal part of the web economy for advertising and sponsorship and does not violate the policies when qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored"; for scaled content abuse including using generative AI tools to generate many pages without adding value for users; and for the policy circumvention provision covering new subdomains, subdirectories, or sites and the possible restriction or removal of search feature eligibility and broader action in Search.
- Google. “Google Search's guidance on using third-party SEO tools, services, and advice.” Google Search Central documentation, last updated June 5, 2026. developers.google.com. Source for Google not evaluating third-party services and the advice to be wary of claims that a service is acceptable or approved by Google Search; for the statement that third-party tools do not have access to Google's internal ranking data, cannot guarantee performance, and that any predictions are their own and may not happen; for the note that using a service or tool does not guarantee ranking success; for the standard that good external advice either qualifies claims as opinion based on data or experience or cites official Google Search guidance; and for the recommendation to use Search Console as a first-party source of data directly from Google Search.
- Google. “Do you need an SEO?” Google Search Central documentation, last updated June 5, 2026. developers.google.com. Source for the statement that you are ultimately responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, and for the expectation that a provider shares the changes they make along with the reasoning behind them.
- Google. “Manual Actions report.” Google Search Console Help. support.google.com/webmasters. Source for manual actions being reported to site owners in Search Console and for the reconsideration request process referenced above.
If You Left Today, What Would You Keep?
Domain, hosting, profile, analytics, content. EveryCentCounts reviews agency agreements and monthly reporting for Virginia small businesses against what Google actually publishes, and tells you plainly what we find.
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