Find out who your buyers actually find.

We measure where a company stands against its real competitors in Google and in AI answers, name the firms beating it, and write the specification that fixes it.

We are not an agency. We do not build websites, run ads, or manage social. Whoever already handles your website does the implementing.

Commercial printing[*]
Two problems, one cause[2]

Buyers now find you two ways. Most companies are measuring one.

01 / SEARCH

Where you rank

When a buyer searches for what you sell, in the city you sell it in, you are either on the first page or you are invisible. Second page rankings produce almost no clicks regardless of how good the company is.

Most established businesses discover that all their search traffic comes from people already typing the company name. That is a directory lookup, not customer acquisition.

02 / AI ANSWERS

Whether you get named

A growing share of buyer research happens inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and the AI Overview block above ordinary search results. Those systems name a handful of companies and cite a handful of sources.

You cannot check this yourself in any reliable way, and almost nobody is measuring it. Being absent is invisible until someone looks.

They are the same problem. AI systems largely cite what already ranks, so the work that fixes one fixes the other. The difference is that AI also draws on third-party sources and needs to resolve your business to a specific company in a specific place. Getting that wrong is why some firms rank reasonably and still never get named.

The work[3]

Every analysis names real competitors and real positions.

Not a generic scorecard and not an automated audit. We measure a company against the three or four firms it actually loses business to, on the search terms its buyers actually use, across Google and the AI answer engines.

Competitors are chosen by hand. Automated tools return national players who do not compete for your contracts, which produces a report that reads well and means nothing.

The output is a position you can verify yourself in about five minutes, and an explanation you could not have arrived at on your own.

Sample competitive analysis summary sheet
Sample summary sheet.
Illustrative data, fictional companies.
Market intelligence[4]

What a full analysis covers.

Every engagement starts here. It is diagnostic rather than promotional, and it is written to be checked.

What we deliver[5]

Three pieces, in order. Most companies start with the first.

01 / ANALYSIS

Where you stand

The full diagnostic. Your position, your competitors, your share, and the reasons behind all three.

  • Competitive field, profiled
  • Keyword and gap analysis
  • AI visibility across four engines
  • Structural causes, with evidence
  • Phased order of work
02 / SPECIFICATION

What to build

A build document written for whoever implements. Precise enough that your developer can work from it without coming back to you with questions.

  • Page inventory: build, rewrite, consolidate, redirect
  • Target term and URL for every page
  • Title, description, heading structure
  • Schema markup, ready to paste
  • Internal links in and out, with anchor text
  • Redirect map and entity fixes
  • Priority sequence with effort estimates
03 / PAGES

The writing

Optional. Most specifications die on delivery because nobody writes the pages. We write them if you want us to.

  • Original copy, written to the spec
  • Definitions, specifics and real numbers
  • FAQ blocks with direct answers
  • Built to be quotable by AI systems
  • Handed over ready to publish
  • Publish check after they go live
What we usually find[6]

The same faults recur in established businesses.

Not because anyone did anything wrong. These are the predictable result of a website built to look good rather than to be found.

Traffic that is almost entirely brandedSearch delivers only people who already know the company name. It introduces nobody new.
Pages competing with each otherOne query returns six of your own URLs, so search engines rank all of them weakly instead of one strongly.
Services with no pageCapabilities listed on the home page that have no destination, so nothing can rank for them and nothing can be cited.
Location pages ranking for nothingMulti-location businesses losing local searches in their own cities because the pages carry no genuine local signal.
An asset nobody maintainedOne old page quietly reaching thousands of monthly searches and producing no traffic because it was written once and abandoned.
Authority quietly decayingDirectory links lapsing faster than new ones are earned, dragging both search rankings and AI citations down together.
Credentials nobody can readReal certifications displayed as footer images, invisible to search engines and AI systems alike.
An unresolved business identitySearch and AI systems unable to pin the company to a specific place, so local intent never resolves to it.
Who this is for[7]

Established businesses that are better than their search presence suggests.

Typically owner or family run, five to fifty million in revenue, one or more locations, with real credentials and a website that reflects none of it.

Usually there is already someone looking after the website, and usually that relationship works fine. What is missing is not effort. It is a diagnosis.

Commercial printingIndustrial distributionPackaging Contract manufacturingEnvironmental servicesFacility services
How we work[8]

Full attention, start to finish.

We have built and run businesses across several industries. Somewhere in that, one question took over and never let go: why do capable, established companies stay invisible online while weaker competitors do not?

Search Standing is new as a company. The work is not. Every analysis is run by the people you deal with directly. Nothing is passed to a junior analyst, nothing is routed through an account manager, and we take on few enough engagements that yours gets the whole of the attention it needs.

We are working through the commercial print market metro by metro, measuring every printer in each one. If you are reading this, your market is probably already done.

Why we stay out of implementation.

Most companies already pay someone to look after their website. Competitive search diagnostics and technical specification is a different discipline from design and marketing, and most creative firms do not do it. That is a specialisation difference, not a criticism.

So we give your existing team something precise to build, and we verify it went live as specified. Nobody has to be replaced, and the work does not stall waiting on us.

It also means we have no reason to recommend work you do not need. The number of pages a market can support is finite, and we will tell you where that limit is.

Start[9]

See where you stand. No charge for the first look.

Send your company and your market. We will run the analysis and send back a two page summary naming your competitors, the search terms they are winning, and where you sit against them.

No call required and no obligation. Read it, check it yourself, and decide. If the findings are worth discussing after that, we can talk then.

hello@searchstanding.com