Why I don’t promise page-one rankings, and what I promise instead

“We’ll get you to page one of Google.”

If you run a business, somebody has probably pitched you a version of that line. I won’t say it.

Who decides where you rank?

Google does, inside Google. AI recommendations get decided inside OpenAI, Google and whoever else is running the assistant. Nobody outside those companies controls the output. Google says this itself, in its advice on hiring an SEO: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google,” and beware of anyone who claims to.

So a guarantee about rankings is really someone making a bet with your budget. If the bet comes in, they take the credit. If it doesn’t, the money is spent either way.

The same holds one layer up. When someone asks an assistant for a good plumber in Oakville, the assistant builds its answer from what the web already says about the plumbers there. There is no slot in that answer for sale. As of September 2026 you can see ads inside and beside some AI answers, labelled as sponsored, in Canada included. Google and OpenAI both say those ads do not shape the answer itself, and I have no reason to doubt it, but it is worth knowing the label is there because the two things sit close together on the screen.

What I can promise

The input. The work is real, it is finite, and you can see it when it is done.

• A page for every service people call you about. If you install tankless water heaters and your site says “plumbing,” no search engine or assistant has a reason to pick you for the tankless question.
• The same facts everywhere. Name, address, phone, hours, what you do, all matching on your site, your Google Business Profile, and the directories that carry you. A machine deciding whether to recommend you needs to be sure who you are first.
• A site that loads before a phone gives up. A lot of your visitors are on a phone, on a mobile connection, and a slow page is a page they never see.
• Plain words near the top of the page saying what you do, where, and for whom, so when an assistant does name you, it describes you in your words.

None of that guarantees a position. All of it is what a position is built from, and all of it is checkable.

How you check on me

This is the part I think matters more than the promise. You can see whether the work happened, and you don’t need me to show you.

Your mobile speed score is public. Google’s PageSpeed Insights runs on any web address, yours or anyone’s, and nobody has to log in. Run it before the work and after. It is a simulated test, and Google’s own documentation says the number moves between runs on its own, so read it as a range. Read the mobile score rather than the desktop one, because the mobile test is the harder one.

Your search numbers sit in your own account. Google Search Console shows how often your pages appeared in results and how often they were clicked. It is free, and it should be in your name rather than mine. Give it four to eight weeks after a change before reading it, because Google has to visit the page again before anything moves, and it visits a small site on its own schedule.

The pages either exist or they don’t. Open your site on your phone. Is there a page for the thing you get asked about most? Does it say the town?

What goes in writing

On a project I put the work itself in the agreement: the pages in scope, what “support” covers and for how long, and what happens if either of us wants to stop. Search Console is set up in your name, not mine, so the search numbers are yours to pull whether or not I’m still involved.

What I don’t put in writing is where you will rank, or whether ChatGPT will name you. I would be signing someone else’s name to that.