Redesigns, experiments or content changes have been shipped, but performance remains weak, unstable or difficult to explain.
People arrive expecting an offer, experience or outcome that the organisation cannot consistently provide.
The website, search results, AI systems, reviews, directories and third parties present different versions of the organisation or offer.
Different functions see different causes, so the visible experience keeps changing while the underlying problem remains unresolved.
You do not need a finished brief or an agreed diagnosis.
Bring the symptom, the uncertainty or the question your organisation can no longer answer with confidence. The first conversation is used to establish whether it is suitable for a focused Diagnostic.
What is materially and operationally true.
The offer, price, policies, delivery, constraints and outcomes the organisation can genuinely support.
What the wider world says and repeats.
Search results, reviews, directories, comparison sites, partner content and public discussion that shape the story before arrival.
What machines appear able to infer.
How search engines, AI systems and other machine-mediated surfaces identify, describe, compare and recommend the organisation or offer.
What people come to believe.
The expectations, assumptions, doubts, risks and decision criteria they carry into the experience.
Where the story is tested.
The pages, journeys, interactions and communications that confirm those expectations or expose the contradictions beneath them.
What the organisation asks people and machines to believe.
What the organisation is actually asking people to choose.
What can genuinely be delivered.
Why the claims should be believed.
What the wider environment communicates and reinforces.
Whether identity, facts and relationships remain stable.
A concise view of how Reality, Corpus, Model, Human and Interface interact across the selected decision environment.
It shows where the layers agree, where they contradict one another and where the visible problem appears to begin.
A structured assessment across Claims, Offer, Reality, Proof, Signals and Entity.
Each area is assessed against the evidence available. Where the evidence is incomplete or disputed, that uncertainty is made explicit rather than filled with confident nonsense.
A record of where facts conflict, claims exceed the evidence, proof is weak or missing, expectations diverge from delivery, or identity and offer details drift across surfaces.
Each finding includes the evidence, likely consequence, confidence level and required response.
A prioritised course of action to stop immediate damage, stabilise the underlying reality and rebuild trust.
It also shows what needs more investigation, what should be monitored, what should remain unchanged and what is already working well enough to protect.
A structured working session to verify the findings, resolve factual disputes and agree priorities, ownership and next steps.
The final recommendations record what has been established, what remains uncertain and what should happen first.
The evidence currently available for the Diagnostic comes from established professional experience, applied examples and live investigations whose outcomes are still being established.
These forms of evidence are kept distinct. Previous experience is not presented as a completed Corpus engagement, and an investigation is not treated as an outcome before anything has changed.
Completed Corpus outcomes will be added when there is sufficient evidence to show what changed and what can reasonably be attributed to the work.
To carry out the Diagnostic, we need:
Conflicting or incomplete evidence is not a reason to delay. Finding and assessing it is part of the Diagnostic.
The Diagnostic examines one bounded decision environment: one priority offer, one relevant audience and the journey through which people discover, understand and decide whether to act.
It is designed to investigate that properly, rather than skim the surface of an entire organisation.
The work usually takes three to four weeks.
After the initial conversation, you receive a clear scope, timeframe and fixed fee. If material issues emerge outside the agreed scope, they are recorded and discussed rather than quietly absorbed into the work.
The Diagnostic establishes what is happening, where the problem originates and what should happen next.
It does not automatically include redesign, development, large-scale content production, technical remediation, ongoing analytics or implementation. Any follow-on work is separately scoped.
It does not guarantee rankings, AI inclusion, traffic, conversion uplift or a predetermined finding. Its purpose is to replace competing explanations with stronger evidence and a clearer decision.
The Diagnostic succeeds by supporting a better decision, not by manufacturing another project.
You do not need to know whether the problem is upstream, on-site or both. Bring the problem your organisation can no longer explain with confidence.
The first conversation is used to understand what feels wrong, where it is showing up, what has already been tried and whether the problem is suitable for a focused Diagnostic.
If the Diagnostic is the right fit, you will receive a clear proposal before any work begins. If it is not, we will say so.
