0.1 The book in one sentence, and the 90-day reading order
What you'll do in this section: Memorise the book in one sentence, and read through the book following the 90-day roadmap. When you're done, you'll have a schedule: which section to read on which day, and which days are read-only with no changes allowed; and if you can only do three things, which three they are and what to measure before you start.
The whole book compressed into one sentence:
Write your facts in clean, visible HTML, let the crawlers in, make machines sure which business you are, then get onto the third-party pages AI already reads.
For why this sentence holds (AI fetches pages live, reads only visible text, and the main battlefield is not your own website), see → General Edition 1.1 How buyers ask, and what AI reads.
The book uses only this one week-numbering system: D1–D6 are the audit and baseline freeze; W1 counts from the day you fix the door (the split day); the D90 settlement falls around week 13. The writing calendar in → General Edition 5.4 The 30-day writing order and the three mechanical gates and the settlement in → General Edition 7.4 Holding position and the 90-day settlement both run on this same week numbering.
- D1Read-only audit2.1–2.5: logs, snippet switches, robots, WAF
- D2–D6Freeze questions & baseline4.1–4.4: question pool, full rounds, web leg, 36 brand-six runs
- Baseline-saved dayFix the door2.6–2.9; the day you fix the door is logged as the split day
- W1Get identified correctlyChapter 3: facts page, person page, five profiles
- W1Pick targets4.5–4.8: grouping, the four states, this quarter's slots
- W2–W6Writing pagesChapter 5; the first page is the price guide page
- W2–W12Off-siteChapter 6: update letters, bylined contributions, long-form video
- Every monthRetestChapter 7; the same ruler
Four things the figure cannot show:
- Why the baseline comes before you fix the door: If you freeze the baseline after the door is already fixed, what you freeze is a shelf already contaminated by your own changes, and before-and-after become impossible to compare. The cost is only a few days' delay in fixing the door, in exchange for an honest set of before-and-after numbers on D90. "Baseline saved" means all three are on disk: the baseline Top 20, the noise band measured from the same-week retest, and the 36 brand-six runs (spec in → General Edition 4.4 The web control leg and the frozen baseline (the book's only full spec)).
- On D1, besides the read-only audit, there is only one more thing to do: get access. Access logs need ops or the hosting provider to grant permission, which is often slower than the audit itself, so ask for it on day one.
- The build order cannot be swapped: with the door closed, everything downstream is multiplied by 0. Door and identity are ×0/1 switches; writing pages and off-site are the only variables that can add points month by month (see → General Edition 1.3 Three gates and three paths). The one exception is the product feed: it does not go through the door, so it can run in parallel with fixing the door. Build order and measurement order are two different things — the ruler's acceptance check comes last, and the freeze comes first.
- Writing pages and off-site both start in W2: the vast majority of the pages AI cites are not on your own website, so off-site needs the same order of magnitude of effort as changing your site (evidence in Appendix A.1). Where the sequencing of effort conflicts with this figure, the figure wins.
If you can only do three things
- PrerequisiteSide check and baseline0.2 side check; the 48-hour baseline in 4.8, read-only until saved
- Thing 1Door and identity2.6–2.9 fix the door; 3.1–3.3 get identified correctly
- Thing 2Price guide pageOne page for all products, in English and in Chinese; 5.12–5.13
- Thing 3Institutional sources and video6.3–6.4 institutional sources; 6.7 your own long-form video
- Every monthRetest7.1–7.2; only counts as moved once it's outside the noise band
What decides the order: evidence strength × how reachable it is within 90 days × whether it is a ×0 multiplier switch.
| Thing | Why it's this one | How you know it's done |
|---|---|---|
| Prerequisite · Side check and baseline | Skip the side check and the pages you write may break the rules for your side; skip freezing the baseline and you will have no honest before-and-after numbers when you're done | The first line of the work order states the side and the switches; the 48-hour baseline is saved before the door is fixed, and the noise band is filled in during week 1 |
| Thing 1 · Door and identity | A ×0/1 multiplier switch: if crawlers cannot get in, 20 pages written is still 0; if AI identifies the wrong business, the credit goes to a namesake instead. Skip this and the other two are wasted | Access logs show real OAI-SearchBot hits returning 200; your price figures can be found in the HTML from Bing's Live Test; ChatGPT can quote the price line word for word when given the URL; factual errors in the brand six questions = 0 |
| Thing 2 · The all-products price guide page (pt02) | This page type's citation density is counted by page type, not by who owns the domain, so a page you build yourself benefits just the same; the price guide pages being cited locally right now are already supplied by practitioners themselves; for Chinese-language queries the field is mostly open, the only battlefield where you can go from 0 seats to some within 90 days, and all it takes to enter is one landing page (evidence in Appendix A.2) | The 2–3 unique fact strings logged for this page are found, by string search, in the actual wording of this month's saved answers |
| Thing 3 · Institutional sources and your own long-form video | Official registers, association profiles, manufacturer dealer locators, and government or statutory practitioner registers are the most certain sources: they don't depend on a third-party editor's approval, they aren't rewritten every year the way rankings are, and their share is growing; long-form video is the highest-return item per unit of effort — cover only process, equipment and cost breakdown, never outcomes or testimonials | On the list and cited X/20 rises by 1 each month; new landing pages start appearing in the Search Console generative AI report impressions for the Google leg |
Two additions: on the strictly regulated side, Thing 2 is written differently: no peer price ranges, and the official benchmark gets its own section, with your own price never appearing inside it (see → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers). For Thing 3, 60% of off-site effort goes to this group of sources; every thick page gets one 8–15 minute long-form video, with the full transcript and that page's URL in the description, timestamped by H2 — spec in → General Edition 6.7 Long videos narrated by the named expert.
The first row doesn't mean schema is useless: set the template up once when the site is built, and it doesn't belong on the per-page checklist (see → General Edition 2.7 Gates 3 and 4: indexing paths, and JSON-LD sealed once). Samples and sources for all three rows are in Appendix A.1.
Which section to turn to now
| Your situation | Go to |
|---|---|
| You haven't decided whether to do this | 4.8, shortcut 1: half a day to judge whether it's worth starting; for an industry this book doesn't cover, read 8.8 first |
| You've decided, and it's day one | 2.1–2.5, read-only, change not a single word |
| The door is open, but AI gets your information wrong, or confuses you with a namesake | Chapter 3 |
| You want to know "do I actually have any seats" | 4.1–4.4: get a ruler first, then ask whether it has gone up |
| You have a ruler, but don't know which questions to run | 4.5–4.8 |
| You're about to start writing pages | Chapter 5; read 5.1–5.3 first |
| You're about to send letters or shoot video | Chapter 6 |
| A month has passed and the numbers haven't moved | The not-moved triage in 7.3; start at layer 1, no skipping layers |
| You're in a regulated industry, before writing any paragraph | 0.2, 0.4, 5.2–5.3 |
| You want to quote a number publicly | Appendices D.1 and B.2 |
| You're switching to an industry this book doesn't cover | Chapter 8, then back to 0.2 to recheck your side |
Two more sentences to remember
AI reads visible HTML. Prices and facts must be written on the page in clean
<table>/<dl>markup; schema is only a copy.A number without a noise band is not a number. Same batch of questions, same engine, same number of passes, retested three times in the same week: only a change larger than the range (max − min) counts as movement.
0.2 Decide which side you are on first
What you'll do in this section: Answer four questions to work out whether you're on the strictly regulated side, the lightly regulated side, or the unregulated side; then check off the other five add-on switches; where you're unsure, start on the stricter side, and write the conclusion into the first line of the First work order.
For question 1, count it "Yes" whether the business itself needs a licence to open, or the individuals doing the work need a personal professional registration; where the individual needs registration, an extra layer of professional-conduct rules applies. Answering "No" to question 1 only makes you provisionally unregulated: you still have to run the three reverse checks in → General Edition 8.2 Five steps to decide the side, and three criteria (does the copy make any claims about health, efficacy, earnings, outcomes or employment; does the audience include minors; is the buyer overseas) — any hit moves you up one level. And "unregulated" does not mean "no rules" — see → General Edition 8.8 Unregulated ≠ easy: admission criteria J0–J7. In question 3, "limited" means testimonials can be written but with conditions, or only part of comparison is banned; "neither limited" means there is no rule specifically governing advertising and only the general consumer-protection baseline applies; even if you need a licence, you still land on the unregulated side. In question 4, "peer comparison" includes both anonymous market ranges that don't name anyone and ranges that cite a third-party source.
Where you land somewhere in the middle and can't decide, start on the stricter side — never carry a "TBD" into the work order. The reason is that the costs are asymmetric: misjudge yourself as lightly regulated, and the pages you write may trigger penalties and joint liability; misjudge yourself as strictly regulated, and it only costs you a few tactics, which you can fix later. These four questions are the field version; the full method (checking the regulator's documents, checking product law, the three reverse checks) is also in 8.2.
Example (medical aesthetics) A clinic holds a healthcare services licence, so question 1 is "yes"; prices can only be fixed in tiers, never written as a range, so question 2 already puts it on the strictly regulated side and question 3 doesn't need answering; question 4 is still asked: Statute text bans peer comparison, so switch E (peer comparison banned) is on.
Once the four questions have settled your side, there are five more switches to check off separately — switches don't change which side you land on, they just add one more hard gate on top of that side:
Three of these are the easiest to miss. Switch A (agency liability) doesn't depend on whether you run the ads yourself — as soon as someone else writes or publishes on your behalf, if the material has a problem, the agency and you share liability; your own responsibility isn't reduced at all, and every outreach letter or piece of material someone else sends on your behalf counts as if you sent it yourself. Switch C (regulated products) can still hit even after question 1 has already put you on the unregulated side: the company itself may need no licence, but if what it sells needs to be registered, licensed or notified, that's a hit — "company unregulated, copy regulated" are two separate judgements, decided by product category, not by company; passing on the company side doesn't mean the copy passes too. Switch D (spans two sides) is judged the simplest way: when one business runs both a regulated and an unregulated line, you don't split the judgement by page or subdomain — the whole site follows the stricter side, and you cannot mix strict-side wording on one page with light-side wording on another. The full criteria for switch B (legally required fields) and switch F (referral commissions banned) are in → General Edition 8.2 Five steps to decide the side, and three criteria; for now, remember the conclusions: when switch B is on, fields like the registration number and the registered name aren't a nice-to-have — missing them is a violation, and they're also the cheapest disambiguation anchor for the identity gate; the regulated side gets one for free, the unregulated side doesn't and has to build its own, see → General Edition 8.6 Seven tactics: how regulated and unregulated sides differ, and why each moves rankings; when switch F is on, any referral channel billed per lead, per sale or by commission is treated as fee-sharing for clients on your part, and cannot be used.
Example (e-commerce) An online store selling skincare, supplements and massage devices needs no industry licence for the company itself, but its ad copy is regulated — switch C (regulated products) is on, judged category by category.
The strictly regulated side has the most switches on, and they shut things down the hardest. Which shelves get closed entirely:
Deciding your side isn't a legal question, it's a rankings question: every row above closes one of the shelves with the largest share of AI citations (share evidence in Appendices A.1 and A.2). These five rows aren't the whole list — the full list is in → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers and → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions, and every closed item comes with a specific replacement — it is never left blank.
Once those shelves are closed, persuasiveness on the strictly regulated side can only come from checkable facts: a fixed final price and its tiers, what's included and what's excepted, the registration number and a link to the official register, the real model numbers of equipment and materials, procedure duration and number of sessions, the term and scope of the follow-up and replacement policy, and operating figures stated with a clear basis and no adjectives (list in → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions). At the organisation level there is almost no room to boast, but a practitioner is allowed to publish their own qualifications, specialisms, practice arrangements and contact details — so on the strictly regulated side, the person page isn't a bonus, it's the main line (see → General Edition 3.3 Person pages and six-trace alignment).
Deciding your side doesn't change the process itself — it only changes how six steps within that process are written:
Deciding your side doesn't change the door or identity layers; it only decides which tactics you can use, and what replaces the ones that are taken away. How each of the six steps is written, by side:
| Step | Strictly regulated side | Lightly regulated side | Unregulated side |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question pool | Price questions must be phrased so a "fixed final price" can answer them | No restriction | No restriction |
| Price wording | Fixed, itemised prices by tier, one item one price, with the tax basis locked in writing; never write prefixes like "from" or "as low as", never write a range (handle case-by-case variation with tiers plus a defining condition for each tier); never write a percentage change, an original price, a discount, a bundle, a time limit or instalments | May write a range and a billing method, but must state the scope, what's excluded and any third-party fees | May write a range and a billing method, but must state the scope and what's excluded; mandatory fees are included in the stated price |
| Page-level bans | Never write laudatory terms, true or not; never write outcomes, success rates or recovery time; never post before-and-after photos; never reprint testimonials or reviews (including screenshots and star ratings); never compare against peers, named or unnamed; never write "free / complimentary / $0"; never cite a third-party directory that calls itself "government-approved"; never write a statement you cannot prove | Laudatory terms must be provable; testimonials may be used but with conditions; do not compare against peer businesses, only compare plans and delivery formats (Conservative line (not statute text)) | Laudatory terms may be written as long as they're provable; case studies and testimonials may be posted; peer comparison pages may be built (same basis, with sources and a check date) |
| Video content boundaries | Cover only process steps and duration/number of sessions, equipment model numbers, cost breakdown and what's included or excepted, and when the procedure isn't suitable; never cover outcomes, never show before-and-after images, never feature a customer, never mention peers | This side's page-level bans apply the same way; otherwise no restriction | No restriction |
| Off-site targets | Never buy or go after a spot on a Best/Top list; disclosing that it's paid doesn't excuse it either; if you are already listed on one of these pages, ask the publisher to remove you, and don't send a correction letter. The main effort goes to official registers, association profiles, manufacturer locators, and educational bylined contributions | Compete for editorial slots, send update letters and correction letters; if switch F (referral commissions banned) is on, don't use referral platforms billed per lead, per sale or by commission | Go after Best/Top lists: directories and lists are both normal targets; for a paid slot, first confirm the page is already being cited |
| Reviews | Never actively request reviews, under any circumstances; observe passively only — never use as a work metric or an acceptance measure | May actively request: no incentives, no ghostwriting, no cherry-picking, no dictating the content, and never confirm a customer's identity externally. Reprinting a single review on a page follows the testimonial rule (written consent, with name, relationship and year attached); for law firms, follow the industry edition | May actively request: no incentives, no ghostwriting, no cherry-picking, no dictating the content; may display on the page (as visible text, stating sample size, period and source, without altering the wording), but never post a self-assigned rating |
The price guide page rule "never place peer data side by side" also follows the side: on the strictly regulated side and wherever switch E (peer comparison banned) is on, never place peer data alongside your own — on the strictly regulated side, even the official benchmark gets its own section, with your own price never appearing inside it; on the lightly regulated side (where switch E is off), the market range can only be an independent, sourced fact section, never in the same table as your own price (Conservative line (not statute text)), and comparison covers only plans and delivery formats, never businesses (Conservative line (not statute text)); the unregulated side can build peer comparisons, on the same basis, with sources and a check date (see → General Edition 5.15 Comparison page (pt04)). Full wording for each step: for the question pool and price, see → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers; for page-level bans and reviews, see → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions; for video, see → General Edition 6.7 Long videos narrated by the named expert; for off-site, see → General Edition 6.2 The send gate, paid listings and the citation-slot table.
0.3 Which page types are limited for you, and what to build instead
What you'll do in this section: First look at the 15 page types with restrictions; where the strictly regulated side can't build one, swap in the legal page type for the same intent, then, if switch E (peer comparison banned) is on, adjust again using the second figure; every other page type may be self-built on all three sides, under the conditions in → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers and → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions; finally, check whether you need to read the matching industry edition.
The seven pairs above are the "don't build" page types the strictly regulated side runs into most often; the category list page (pt37) in the table below is also not built — build the organisation's own service catalogue instead; two more types aren't built on the strictly regulated side, outside the table: the case-law page (pt36, whose equivalent is pt32) and the market observation page (pt46, also not scheduled on the lightly regulated side), see → General Edition 5.1 The page-type map: 46 types, six families, three evidence tiers, availability by side. If the strictly regulated side wants onto the list shelf, the only legal route right now is the criteria-based selection guide (pt43): list the criteria, don't rank, don't name (not measured; 65% confidence). Full three-side comparison for all 15 types:
| Page type | Strictly regulated side | Lightly regulated side | Unregulated side | Switch E on (peer comparison banned) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Official pricing page (pt03) | Not built; build pt01 instead | May build after rewriting, as an all-in price page | May self-build | Not built; build pt01 instead |
| Comparison page (pt04) | May build after rewriting, comparing plans only, not businesses | May build after rewriting, comparing only plans and delivery formats, not businesses (Conservative line (not statute text)) | May self-build | May build after rewriting, comparing only plans and procedures, not businesses |
| List page (pt05) | Not built (at the page-type level, Conservative line (not statute text); ranking is itself comparison, which runs into the Statute text ban on comparison — a sign-off cannot produce a publishable version) | Not built (Conservative line (not statute text); may be loosened with the client's written reasons) | May self-build; if you rank yourself first, disclose it | Not built |
| One question, one page (pt06) | May self-build; for symptom-type questions, build pt08 instead | May self-build | May self-build | May build after rewriting; for cost questions, do not write a peer range |
| Remedy and second-opinion page (pt08) | May self-build; the safety-first order may not be reordered | May self-build | May self-build | May build after rewriting; do not criticise the previous provider |
| Organisation facts page (pt09) | May self-build; never write superlatives, testimonials or star ratings | May self-build | May self-build | May build after rewriting; do not state your position relative to peers |
| Subsidy and limit rules page (pt17) | Official version: downstream citation only; your own version may be built after rewriting: the subsidy stays in an independent fact section, not in the same table as your own price and not adjacent to it, with no case-by-case confirmation tier | Official version: downstream citation only; your own version may be self-built | Official version: downstream citation only; your own version may be self-built | Not applicable |
| Third-party single-business review (pt24) | Not built (Conservative line (not statute text)) | Not built (Conservative line (not statute text)) | May self-build | Not built |
| Review aggregate page (pt28) | Not built (a rating is itself a testimonial, Statute text) | May build after rewriting, with testimonials attaching name, relationship and year | May self-build | Not built |
| Self-built reputation and credentials page (pt29) | Not built (testimonials and star ratings, Statute text) | May build after rewriting, testimonials must attach name, relationship and year | May self-build | May build after rewriting, stating only provable expertise, never implying standing relative to peers |
| Category list page (pt37) | Not built; build the organisation's own service catalogue instead | May build after rewriting, as the organisation's own catalogue, with names matching the registration | May self-build | Not built; build the organisation's own service catalogue instead |
| Calculator page (pt38) | May build after rewriting, without outputting a price commitment | May self-build | May self-build | May build after rewriting, stating "subject to formal engagement", not comparing price with peers |
| Verdict-first page (pt41) | Not built (Conservative line (not statute text); a verdict is itself a comparison) | May build after rewriting, as a scenario comparison table only, never writing "best" or "best value" | May self-build | Not built |
| Time-limited promotion page (pt42) | Not built (Statute text) | May self-build; if switch B (legally required fields) is on, write out the full validity period and conditions | May self-build | Not applicable |
| Buyer's selection framework (pt43) | May build after rewriting, removing the business-by-business comparison and keeping only the evaluation criteria | May self-build | May self-build | May build after rewriting, removing the comparison block |
That the lightly regulated side doesn't self-build lists or reviews is, in the example industry, an internal conservative policy, not a written ban — hence labelled "Conservative line (not statute text)": the client's compliance officer can loosen it by giving written reasons (see → General Edition 0.4 The three labels for compliance sentences, and the stop-and-escalate rule). A business governed only by consumer-protection law, with no advertising-specific rule, falls on the unregulated side, and may self-build lists: the ranking needs a published method and checkable basis, and if you rank yourself first, disclose it.
Seven more types don't vary by side: the regulatory obligations and penalties page (pt10), the legislation text page (pt15), the register / approved list page (pt20), official replies and speech records (pt23), sentiment, forum and news pages (pt25), device and product regulatory documents (pt32), and the third-party directory listing (pt33). None of the three sides can self-build these; all you can do is make sure you're listed, fill in your own row completely, or build a downstream restatement page. For device and product regulatory documents (pt32), your own page's side-effects section must also match them point by point. Apart from pt36 and pt46 mentioned above, every other page type may be self-built on all three sides, under the conditions in → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers and → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions.
When switch E (peer comparison banned) is on, every block that lets the reader compare you with peers has to change:
The first row is the easiest to change incompletely: deleting the words "within the market range" doesn't count as done — the structure itself, "market range first, then your own price", is what's banned. In the example industry this splits into two tiers: comparison that names, or lets a reader identify, a specific business is Statute text, and even a sign-off cannot loosen it; an anonymous market range that names no one is Conservative line (not statute text) — but as long as the sample and basis can't be verified, a separate rule explicitly rules it out too, so in practice it can almost never be loosened. For how to write an official-basis sentence, see → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers.
Questions like "who's best" are the easiest to assign to the wrong page type. Not every "who's best" question goes to a list page:
No page is written for the "choosing a business" branch, because when buyers ask "who's best", neither leg cites a "best" article written by the business itself. The lightly regulated branch is Conservative line (not statute text); loosening it needs the client's compliance officer to give written reasons.
Industry editions published so far: Dental & Aesthetics Edition — for dental clinics and aesthetic clinics; Law Firms Edition — for Singapore law practices serving individuals and small businesses.
0.4 The three labels for compliance sentences, and the stop-and-escalate rule
What you'll do in this section: Understand what the three labels mean in the General Edition — each one states how firmly this pattern is backed in the example industry, not the law of your own industry; when you hit one of three situations, stop and escalate to the client's compliance officer for a written sign-off; remember a sign-off can only loosen situations ① and ②.
Items labelled [Compliance] or [Safety] are not judged by "does it move rankings": write them to the regulation and to personal safety, and where that conflicts with what's measured, follow the regulation — you may not loosen a rule just because "the cited pages write it that way too".
The labels in the General Edition state "how firmly this pattern is backed in the example industry" — not the law of your own industry. For your own industry, look up the actual rule text following → General Edition 8.2 Five steps to decide the side, and three criteria; until you find it, label it "Original text not obtained" across the board, and never present it to the client as statute; for how to write it in the meantime, follow the "when unsure, start on the stricter side" rule in → General Edition 0.2 Decide which side you are on first. That way you never pass off the example industry's rule as your own industry's law, and you never loosen the wording just because you "can't find it yet" either.
In three situations you must stop and escalate to the client's compliance officer for a written sign-off:
① Facts only the client knows: whether they've ever bought a review or ranking package, whether they have documentation on file for a claimed specialism, which country the certifying body is registered in, whether this price is the final, tax-inclusive price — only the client knows things like this; we can't judge them, so ask before writing. ② A judgement the handbook labels "Conservative line (not statute text)": this is an internal conservative policy, not a statutory ban; if the client wants to loosen it, have them give written reasons, and we write to what's signed off and keep it on file. ③ An item the handbook labels "Original text not obtained": a sign-off cannot supply the missing original text — even with a sign-off, it is not released: write the handbook's default wording, and do not use it as a basis for judgement, assuming neither that the rule exists nor that it does not; never estimate an official figure, and never carry over an old value — if you can't get the original table, don't write a number; write a pointer sentence such as "per the official schedule, see <link>", and update it once you actually obtain the original text. A written sign-off resolves only these three stop-and-escalate situations, and it can only loosen ① and ②; it never turns something banned as Statute text into something publishable.
A sign-off is not a release from liability for us either: it is the judgement of the client's compliance officer, and it doesn't remove the joint liability of the party writing and publishing on the client's behalf (when switch A (agency liability) is on). Before writing, there are also five stop conditions: identity is unclear, the price cannot be made a final price, a number fails the six checks, the client hasn't authorised it, or the comparison bases differ — hit any one of these and escalate to the compliance officer; never fill in a number yourself. See → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers.
How a writer handles each of the three labels once they have it:
Why we're the ones writing these compliance rules: not because we know their industry better than the client — on the business and on the practice, they're the expert, not us. It's because a compliance rule decides the layout's own cells: which column can or can't carry a price range, which fields must be recorded next to each other, whether a promotion cell exists on the page at all — we're the ones who draw the cells, and if we draw one wrong the whole table has to be redone, usually after the body text has already been written to the wrong structure. The party writing and publishing on the client's behalf shares liability with the client — when switch A (agency liability) is on, that liability can't be avoided. So every rule only states "this is what this cell's wording is limited to"; it never gives legal advice; in the industry edition, every rule carries a rule number, the original sentence and a URL — a paraphrase doesn't count, and if it doesn't match, flag it; every ban must come with a matching "rewrite this cell as" entry, and a draft that deletes something and leaves the cell blank is sent back for insufficient density — a page with no exclusive checkable facts gives AI no reason to cite it.
Where a label comes from is never the writer's own call:
In the second box, "the number must match" means this rule number has to match the original text in the industry edition. Every compliance sentence in the book must ultimately carry a label, but the label can only come from the original text: a large number of original sentences only carry a rule number, or carry nothing at all, and the moment a writer fills the gap themselves to complete the cell, it's easiest for an inference to get written up as "Statute text". This is the step with the highest risk of lying. Any ban with no original rule sentence behind it is labelled Conservative line (not statute text) across the board; a writer may never add "Statute text" themselves.
For how to explain these three labels to a client, see → General Edition B.2 Approved wording and scripts.
