Six rules the system holds, whether or not anyone is checking.
Your score never touches your private analytics. Every brand is measured on the same information, so your number means the same thing as anyone else’s.
Every number traces back to real data. When something can’t be measured, we say so rather than estimating it.
New content is never aimed at a term you already rank for. Nothing we publish competes with a page you already own.
Branded searches would inflate the number and tell you nothing. They are excluded before anything is counted.
The competitive set is yours. The method has no favourites and no house brands, and it treats every domain the same way.
Connecting your own data sharpens what we recommend. It never changes the number, which is what keeps one month comparable to the last.