§04 · Voice
Say what happened, and what didn't.
We sound like the careful senior SEO on the team who checked before speaking: specific about what happened, honest about what nobody controls, and quietly pleased when work gets found. Modest, plain, outcome-led and exact.
Modest beats loud.
DoModest: "we help", "sooner", "can be considered"
Don'tHype: "instantly", "guaranteed", "skyrocket"
DoOutcome-led: "11 of 12 links seen by Google"
Don'tMechanism-first: "submit to our crawl network API"
DoPlain: "Google hasn't looked at it yet"
Don'tJargon: "crawl-budget-constrained URL"
DoSourced: "Google says crawling can take a few days to a few weeks"
Don'tBorrowed hype stats with no source
DoWarm with bad news: "Nothing lost: refunded"
Don'tAlarmist: "FAILED", red banners for "not yet"
Eight writing rules.
01
Lead with the outcome
"Your updated pricing page is in Google's index" comes before "we pushed it".
02
Answer first
The first one or two sentences answer the question in a way someone could quote.
03
Short sentences, everyday words
Write for a smart reader who isn't an SEO. A hero has at most 35 words and one call to action.
04
Name things the way the app does
"Seen by Google", "Invisible", "Already seen", "Sent to Bing".
05
Numbers only if real
Our own measured data, or third-party data with attribution and a link. Demo counts are clearly illustrative.
06
Every quotation in italics
Site-wide, enforced in CSS.
07
Sentence case
For headings and buttons. "FreshlyCited" is the only mid-word capital.
08
Google first, everything else indirect
Google Search, then AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini. Bing is the IndexNow bonus. ChatGPT and Perplexity get the honesty line only.
Google still decides.
Our promise is about Google and Google's AI answers. Every other engine is an honest, indirect bonus, never the headline.
Engine order, everywhere
Google Search → AI Overviews → AI Mode → Gemini (when it grounds in Search) → Bing and Copilot as the free IndexNow bonus → ChatGPT, Perplexity and other assistants, with the honesty line only.
When a page explains how we relate to AI engines beyond Google, it uses this block. Lines can be dropped, never strengthened; only the month changes.
Google is still where most of the web's visits come from, and its AI answers are built on its index.
- Google still sends about 9 in 10 of the visits that search engines send to websites (StatCounter, September 2026).
- Its AI Overviews and AI Mode only link to pages that are “indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet.”
- Google's Gemini app can ground its answers in “content from the Google Search index” too.
- So helping a good new or updated page get found and indexed by Google is the first step for all three.
- We also send it to Bing through IndexNow (an open "this page changed" notice that Bing and other engines accept), and Microsoft says Copilot's web answers use the Bing search service.
- ChatGPT, Perplexity and other assistants use their own crawlers and search partners. We don't submit to them, and we don't claim to.
- Whether any AI answer cites your page still depends on quality, relevance and authority.
Use the app's words.
Search language is fine in guides (“indexed”, “not indexed”). Product moments use the app's words, exactly. “Sent to Bing” stays until a real Bing index check ships.
| The concept | What the app says |
|---|---|
| Indexed | Seen by Google |
| Not indexed | Invisible |
| Already indexed, so not pushed or charged | Already seen |
| Bing notified through IndexNow | Sent to Bing |
| Start a push | Make links visible (the button: "Make 12 links visible · up to 12 credits") |
| Index check | Visibility check |
| Counts | "19 of 40 seen by Google", never "19/40 indexed" |
| Before and after | Visibility lift: 9 → 11 of 12 links seen by Google (+2) |
| Workspaces | Clients |
Words we don't use.
A test fails the build on the first few. All of them are binding.
| Don't say | Why | Say instead |
|---|---|---|
| No controlled evidence; a promise we can't keep | found sooner, eligible sooner | |
| Nobody can guarantee one | Each engine chooses its own sources | |
| Google says crawling takes days to weeks | Google sets the pace; we re-check on days 1, 3 and 7 | |
| Reads as overclaiming | shows you what was indexed | |
| Implies we create citability | indexed and eligible | |
| Promises the outcome | help it get found sooner | |
| We don't check Bing's index yet | Sent to Bing | |
| Only reported, never confirmed | ChatGPT uses its own crawler and partners it doesn't name | |
| Stale, and it measures visits, not searches | about 9 in 10 of the visits search engines send | |
| Indexing makes a page eligible, nothing more | eligible for AI Overviews and AI Mode | |
| Unmeasurable or unverifiable | Specific, sourced facts | |
| Old names | FreshlyCited |
Before and after.
Off-brand“Get cited in ChatGPT in 24 hours, with proof.”
On-brand“When you update a page, we help Google find and index it sooner and show you what Google has indexed. For sites you verify, it's sent to Bing too.”
Off-brand“Instant indexing for all your backlinks!”
On-brand“Check every link first. Push only the ones Google can't see. Re-check on the date we said.”
Off-brand“Your push FAILED.”
On-brand“2 links couldn't be pushed. Nothing lost: refunded.”
Off-brand“Google controls AI search, with 90.46% of all searches.”
On-brand“Google still sends about 9 in 10 of the visits search engines send to websites (StatCounter, September 2026).”
Gloss it the first time.
No jargon in a hero. Elsewhere, the first use of a term of art gets a plain-language gloss, in these words.
| Term | Gloss |
|---|---|
| IndexNow | An open "this page changed" notice that Bing and other participating engines accept. Google doesn't use it. |
| AEO | Answer engine optimization: getting your pages found, trusted and cited by AI answer engines such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. |
| GEO | Generative engine optimization: the same goal from the other side, making your content visible in answers written by generative AI. |
| Indexed | In the search engine's index, the library it answers from. A page that isn't indexed can't show in search or in the AI answers built on it. |
| Crawl | When a search engine's bot visits the page to read it. |
| MCP | Model Context Protocol: a standard way for AI assistants like Claude or Cursor to use a tool directly. |