GoGuides Frequently Asked Questions

GoGuides is an independent web-intelligence and provenance system for the open web. It operates its own crawler and index, maintains AI Rank, public domain observations, provenance history, verification context, machine-readable web-state records, Bot Radar request evidence, Change Intelligence, and source-attributed Verified Text.

Yes. GoGuides is operational, but crawling, evaluation, search quality, queue and freshness controls, provenance, Bot Radar, Live Index services, and machine-readable interfaces continue to be improved. See the Roadmap.

No. GoGuides builds and operates its own index from public crawl data. It may use lawful public datasets for supporting information such as spelling, classification, or entity context.

The name and history continue, but the current platform was rebuilt with new technology, independent web crawling, AI Rank, provenance history, policy controls, machine-readable interfaces, Verified Text, and a separate Live Index inclusion layer for approved domains. Read more on About GoGuides.

A GoGuides public domain record shows information from GoGuides' own observation and evaluation systems. Depending on the record, it may include AI Rank, grade, policy state, verification context, freshness, provenance history, Trust ID, fingerprints, Web State, and machine-use guidance.

No. GoGuides may observe and maintain a record for a publicly accessible domain even when its owner has never created an account.

• Observed: GoGuides has independently seen or evaluated the public domain.
• Claimed: a user account has connected itself to the domain.
• Verified: domain ownership has been confirmed.
• Live Index included: an eligible domain was approved and completed the paid Live Index submission process.

GoGuides separates historical observation from positive public eligibility. A restricted domain may retain historical or provenance records while badges, positive presentation, Live Index inclusion, or other services remain unavailable.

AI Rank is a GoGuides score from 0 to 100 summarizing measured website quality signals. It is not a score issued by OpenAI or another outside company.

No. AI Rank, crawl observation, public-display eligibility, and paid Live Index inclusion are separate concepts. Policy state, resolver rules, crawl condition, restricted-category enforcement, and other rules may also affect public presentation.

No. Payment does not buy a higher AI Rank, better grade, favorable evaluation, ranking, policy outcome, or crawl priority.

GoGuides crawls publicly accessible websites to build and maintain its own web corpus, measure public web state, calculate evaluation inputs, preserve provenance, detect change, and maintain freshness. See crawler information.

No. Crawling and observation do not mean a domain is owner-verified, publicly eligible, included in the Live Index, recommended, or endorsed.

Website owners can publish crawler instructions through robots.txt and standard access controls. See Robots.txt and GoGuides Web Intelligence.

Yes. GoGuides evaluates eligibility before payment. Approved domains pay $69.95 one time per domain for submission into the GoGuides Live Index and machine-readable trust feeds. Broad GoGuides crawling and observation remain separate from paid submission.

Paid Live Index inclusion means an eligible domain has passed the current eligibility process and completed the approved submission. Payment buys Live Index inclusion and associated services. It does not change AI Rank, grade, evaluation outcome, policy state, ranking, or crawl priority.

Approved domains pay $69.95 one time per domain for Live Index and machine-readable trust-feed inclusion. The current submission includes lifetime Trust Signal activation and the first year of Live Bot Radar. Continued Live Bot Radar after the included first year is optional and currently $69.95 per year per domain. See Live Index submission.

No. Lifetime Trust Signal activation remains part of the current approved Live Index submission for that domain. Live Bot Radar includes the first year; continued Radar after that year is optional and currently billed separately.

Bot Radar reports supported AI and search-system requests observed at supported GoGuides endpoints associated with a domain. It may show system names, timing, request counts, endpoints, freshness, and return patterns. These records do not by themselves prove that the system directly visited the domain's website.

No. Bot Radar records requests observed by GoGuides. It does not by itself prove direct website visits, model training, reliance, indexing, citation, recommendation, endorsement, or how an outside company used the information.

Verified Text is a public registry of source-attributed text records with stable identifiers, canonical pages, structured metadata, and SHA-256 hashes. Explore Verified Text Search or the public library.

It proves that retrieved text matches the stored GoGuides record. It does not prove every statement in the underlying source is factually correct.

Yes. Start with Machine Discovery JSON, the integration guide, or Signal JSON.

It summarizes how GoGuides interprets the current record for actions such as reading, summarizing, citing, recommending, sensitive advice, or transactions. It does not control outside systems.

Yes. GoGuides can provide licensed web and domain intelligence data derived from its independent crawl and provenance systems. Available data can include current observations, historical fingerprint changes, DNS and TLS evidence, redirects, robots state, content fingerprints, observation history, and other structured domain signals.

Delivery can be tailored to the use case through APIs, JSON, bulk exports, change or delta feeds, domain subsets, and custom datasets. See the GoGuides Web Provenance Data Feed for the technical overview.

It is a compact visual surface generated from GoGuides record state. It is informational—not a browser security certificate or guarantee.

No. Badge and positive Trust Signal publishing depend on current eligibility, applicable ownership or verification state, Live Index/service state, and policy rules.

GoGuides does not need cross-site advertising profiles to operate. It records normal operational data needed for accounts, security, crawling, submissions, public records, and service measurement. See the Privacy Policy.

No. GoGuides is not a security certificate, legal approval, factual guarantee, professional recommendation, or truth oracle.

No. GoGuides cannot control whether an outside search engine, crawler, AI system, or platform indexes, cites, recommends, or sends traffic to a website.

Yes. The former API-powered question service was retired so it cannot create ongoing AI API charges. Public documentation, Navigation, Trust Record lookup, Verified Text, and Feedback remain available.