Before you sign anything

Is it worth paying for AI search help?

Sometimes. If you run a business you will have had the emails: get found in ChatGPT, appear in Google's AI answers, more traffic in ninety days. Some of what they sell is useful and some of it can harm your site. This page gives you the questions that tell the two apart, using what Google itself publishes. It names no supplier, and it applies to us as much as to anyone else.

What a guarantee is worth

A guarantee means something only when you know where it starts and how it is counted.

  • Ask for the starting number. "More traffic" than what? Measured by which tool, over which months, and compared with the same months last year? A garden firm's visits rise every spring whoever it pays.
  • Ask where the guarantee is written. If it appears on the sales page and nowhere in the terms you sign, you do not have one.
  • Ask what happens if it is missed. A refund, a free month, or nothing? A free month of a service that did not work is not much of a remedy.
  • Know what Google says. Google's own guide to hiring help says "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google", and tells owners to beware of anyone who claims to.
  • Mentions by assistants cannot be promised at all. Nobody outside the companies that run them decides what ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude says. Why, in plain terms.

What a countdown proves

A timer on a sales page proves that the page has a timer.

  • Look again next week. Some countdowns reset on a schedule and the "ending soon" offer comes back. If the price is still there in a fortnight, it was never ending.
  • A real deadline is written down. A dated quote, sent to you, that says when the price expires.
  • "Only five places left" is a claim, not a fact. Ask what limits the places. People's time is a real limit; software usually is not.

What Google says about bought links and mass-produced pages

Two things on offer in this market sit close to what Google calls spam. If a policy is broken, the cost falls on your site, not on the seller's. Google's spam policies say sites that break them "may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all".

  • Links you pay for or swap. Google lists as link spam "Buying or selling links for ranking purposes" and "Excessive link exchanges". A package of backlinks, or a network where members' sites link to each other, is exactly the thing described.
  • Pages written and published in bulk. Google calls it scaled content abuse when many pages are made mainly to move rankings and not to help people, and gives the example of using AI tools "to generate many pages without adding value for users".
  • A tool is not the problem; the purpose is. A post a week written with help from software, by someone who knows your trade, is not spam. Fifty posts a month that nobody would choose to read may be. Ask to see ten published posts from an existing customer and decide whether you would read them.

Questions to ask before you sign

Google's own guide suggests asking several of these. A supplier worth paying will answer all of them in writing.

  1. What exactly will you change, and will you show me every change?
  2. How will we measure it, from what starting number, and who holds the data? The accounts that hold your figures should be in your name, not the supplier's.
  3. Do you buy links, swap links or publish pages in bulk on my site? A plain no, or a plain yes with an explanation, are both answers. A vague one is not.
  4. Is the guarantee in the contract, and what happens if it is missed?
  5. How long am I committed, does it renew automatically, and what do I get back if I cancel? Read the refund terms before you pay, not after the first renewal.
  6. If I stop paying, what stays? Pages, accounts and anything published in your name.
  7. Can I speak to a customer like me, in this country?
  8. Who are you? The company's legal name and where it is registered. A UK company can be looked up free at Companies House.

When it is worth paying

When the problem has a name. "Your robots.txt turns away the services that answer questions", "your business has three different names across the web", "you have no page for the service you most want to sell": each is a job with an end, and paying someone to do it, with a test that shows it is done, is money well spent.

When you cannot yet say what the problem is, find that out first. It costs less than a subscription and tells you whether you need one. The free check reads your homepage, robots.txt and sitemap in about a minute, and the checklist covers what you can look at yourself.

The same questions, asked of us. EdenLens sells a diagnosis, bought once. It guarantees no ranking, mention or traffic figure, runs no countdown, publishes its prices and its terms of sale, including what you get back if you cancel, and does not sell the repairs. If your site is in good order, the report says so.

Checked on 3 November 2026 against Google Search Central's guide to hiring help with search and its spam policies. Neither page carries a date. When either changes, this page changes with it, and the date above moves.