Methodology

Every finding has to survive someone trying to refute it.

The framework, the 100-point scale, and the two steps most audits leave out: hostile verification, and controlling the instrument before quoting a number.

Get a visibility reading See the scale

The ATLAS visibility framework

Five channels · 44 systems

Five letters, and every one of them is a list of things that can be measured. A finding belongs to a channel, and a channel has a defined scope — that is what makes a diagnosis addressable rather than a vibe.

How the site and its information are structured — the shape a crawler walks and a buyer navigates.

site architectureURL architecturecategory hierarchyinternal linkinginformation architecturecrawl pathscontent relationships

How accessible and machine-understandable the system is. The layer that fails silently.

crawlabilityindexationcanonicalisationrobotsXML sitemapsJavaScript SEOrenderingcore web vitalsstructured datamigrationsinternational infrastructure

How the brand connects to what people actually search, in every market it sells in.

keyword researchsearch intentsemantic relationshipstopic architecturelocalised languagecommercial intentcontent architecture

How the wider web corroborates the brand. A hundred spam domains and two real citations is a weaker position than the two alone.

backlinksmentionsdigital PRcitationsreferencesbrand signalsentity corroborationexternal trust

How the brand performs across every discovery system. Answer engines do not rank pages; they assemble an answer and cite what they trust.

GoogleAI searchanswer enginesgenerative searchAI OverviewsAI Modeecommerce searchmarketplace searchentity discoverycitation visibilitysearch behaviour

Each channel maps to one or more of the five services — see what Atlas practises for how the channels turn into engagements.

The 100-point scale

Weights, not scores

Technical foundation20

Search architecture15

Content & intent15

Ecommerce10

International10

Entity10

Authority10

AI visibility10

Visibility riskbelow 60

Growth opportunity60–74

Strong75–89

Elite90–100

The weights are fixed and published so that a score means the same thing between engagements. Technical foundation carries the largest single weight because it is the only layer whose failure is total. This scale has its own name and its own page — see the Atlas Visibility Index.

How the work runs

Two-week loops

DiagnoseUnderstand the system as it is, not as it was specified.
MapIdentify the visibility architecture, and where it breaks.
PrioritiseFind the highest-leverage constraint — the smallest change that moves the number.
BuildImplement it. Shipping in two-week loops, not quarterly plans.
MeasureTrack what actually moved, and say so when nothing did.
CompoundThen the next one.

The two steps most audits leave out

Where the cost is

Hostile verificationEvery finding is re-examined by a verifier instructed to refute it. On one engagement that removed 44 findings outright and corrected the severity of 56 more, before the client saw any of them.Standing

Instrument controlCache state, consent, third parties, run count and confidence interval are fixed and stated before any performance figure is quoted. Uncontrolled, the honest output is no number.Standing

Traceable figuresEvery number in an Atlas document names the instrument it came from. Anything that cannot be traced is removed rather than softened.Standing

These are the expensive parts and the invisible ones. They are also the reason the figures in an Atlas report can be quoted back to us — read five ways to measure Core Web Vitals wrong for what happens without them, or see what an Atlas audit is end to end.

Build visibility

Seven questions

Atlas reads the site before the first conversation.

Get a visibility reading Score your own site