Terms of Service

1. Accepting these terms

By visiting this website or using the free audit, you agree to these terms. If you are using the site for an organisation, you confirm you have authority to accept them on its behalf. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site. These terms form a binding agreement between you and us; we recommend you read them, since continuing to use the site is how you accept them.

2. Who we are

This site is operated by The AC Group, an authority and citations practice that has been online since 1999 — 27 years. The contracting entity is The AC Group, with its registered office at 885 West Georgia Street, Suite 1950, Vancouver, BC V6C 3E8, Canada. Where these terms say “we”, “us”, or “our”, they mean that entity.

3. Who may use this site

This is a business service intended for companies and the people who work for them. You may use the site only if you are at least 16 years old and able to enter into a binding agreement. The site is not directed at consumers acting outside a trade or profession, and it is not directed at children.

4. What this site offers

The site is, in the main, informational. It describes our services, publishes our notes and analysis, and lets you request a free audit. Reading the site, or requesting the audit, does not by itself create a services relationship between us and does not oblige either of us to enter one. Any engagement for paid work is formed only through a separate, signed agreement, as described in section 6.

5. The free audit

The free audit is offered as a courtesy and an introduction to how we work. When you request it, you give us a work email and a domain, and we prepare an assessment of that domain’s visibility. We provide it on a best-effort, informational basis: it reflects our reading at a point in time, it is not professional, legal, or financial advice, and it carries no promise of any particular finding or outcome. Receiving an audit places you under no obligation to buy anything, and offering one places us under no obligation to continue beyond it.

6. Paid services

If we go on to work together, that paid work is governed by a separate agreement — a proposal, statement of work, or services contract — that sets out scope, fees, timelines, and its own terms. Where that separate agreement and these website terms differ on a point about the paid work, the separate agreement governs. Nothing on this site, including pricing pages, is itself an offer capable of acceptance; figures shown are indicative and are confirmed only in the signed agreement.

7. Acceptable use

When you use this site, you agree not to:

• use it for any unlawful purpose, or in breach of these terms;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site, its servers, or connected systems;
• interfere with its operation, security, or availability, including through automated abuse;
• scrape, harvest, or systematically copy its content except as section 8 allows;
• submit anything false, misleading, infringing, or that you have no right to send; or
• misrepresent your identity or your authority to act for an organisation.

8. Intellectual property

The content on this site — the writing, the analysis, the design, the name, and the marks — belongs to us or is used by us under licence, and it is protected by intellectual property law. We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, revocable permission to view the site and to quote short, attributed extracts of our notes with a link back. Beyond that, you may not copy, republish, redistribute, or build a competing or derivative work from our content without our written permission. The permission ends if you breach these terms.

9. What you send us

When you send us an email, a domain, or any other material, you confirm you have the right to send it and that it does not infringe anyone’s rights. You keep ownership of what you send; you simply grant us the permission we need to read it, respond to it, and provide what you asked for. Please do not send confidential information you would not want handled under an ordinary business enquiry, and do not send special-category personal data, since we have no reason to process it.

10. Third-party links

The site may link to third-party websites and sources. We link to them because they are useful, not because we control them or endorse everything on them. We are not responsible for their content, their availability, or their own terms and privacy practices, which are between you and them.

11. No guarantee of results

The site and the free audit are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, to the fullest extent the law allows. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that the content is complete, current, or fit for a particular purpose.

One disclaimer matters enough to state plainly. Search rankings, AI citations, and visibility in any search or answer engine are determined by third parties — the engines themselves — whose systems and judgements we do not control. We can apply sound method and honest work; we cannot and do not guarantee any specific ranking, citation, traffic, or commercial result, and you should treat any party that does guarantee such outcomes with caution.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of this site or the free audit. Our total liability arising from the site or the free audit is limited to one hundred euros (EUR 100), the site and the free audit being provided at no charge. Liability for paid work is addressed in the separate agreement that governs it. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law — such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

13. Indemnification

You agree to cover our reasonable losses and legal costs to the extent they arise from your misuse of the site, your breach of these terms, or your infringement of someone else’s rights through what you send us. We will tell you promptly of any such claim and let you participate in handling it.

14. Privacy

How we handle personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms by reference. Our use of cookies is described in our Cookie Policy.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as our practices or the law change. The version in force is the one published here, with the “last updated” date shown at the top. If you keep using the site after a change, you accept the updated terms; if you do not accept them, please stop using the site.

16. Suspending access

We may suspend or withdraw access to the site, in whole or in part, if you breach these terms or if we need to for security, legal, or operational reasons. We will act reasonably in doing so. The sections that by their nature should survive — intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law — continue to apply after access ends.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of British Columbia, Canada, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the courts of Vancouver, British Columbia have jurisdiction over any dispute, unless mandatory law in your country of residence gives you a different right. Before formal proceedings, we ask that you contact us so we can try to resolve the matter directly, which is usually faster for everyone.

18. General terms

• Whole agreement. These terms, with the Privacy and Cookie policies, are the whole agreement about your use of the site, and replace earlier site terms.
• Severability. If a court finds any part unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a term on one occasion, we keep the right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our consent; we may transfer ours as part of a reorganisation or sale, without reducing your rights.
• Events beyond control. We are not responsible for failures caused by events outside our reasonable control.

19. How to reach us

If you have a question about these terms, contact us at [email protected] or through our contact page. We read these messages ourselves.