Answered
The named route returned a usable answer for that sample.
Official interpretation boundary
GeoCheckTool limitations and evidence states
GeoCheckTool preserves what was observed, where it was observed, and what remains unknown. It does not turn one sample, one publication, or one later change into a guaranteed or causal result.
Lifecycle states are not interchangeable
Publication, crawling, indexing, ranking, AI mention, AI citation, recommendation, conversion, and business improvement are separate states. A later state never backfills an earlier state, and an unknown state is not zero.
Draft
Prepared internally; not approved or public.
Reviewed
Facts and boundaries passed the applicable internal review.
Published
The item is publicly reachable at its stated URL.
Publicly validated
The live response, canonical, robots, structure, and visible facts were checked.
Crawled
A crawler or first-party tool reports fetching the public item.
Indexed
A search surface reports the item in its index.
Ranked
The item appears for a specific query, date, location, device, and surface.
AI mentioned
A named AI surface mentions the entity in a preserved observation.
AI cited
A named AI surface links or attributes a source in a preserved observation.
Converted
An authorized measurement records a defined customer action.
Measurement outcomes stay explicit
Answered, no-surface, not-run, timeout, rate-limited, invalid, and provider-failed states remain separate. Partial coverage is not presented as complete, and a missing optional surface is not silently converted to zero.
No surface
The search-result surface was valid but the optional AI feature was absent.
Not run
The sample was not attempted; it is not scored as zero.
Timeout or rate-limited
The route did not complete within its operational boundary.
Invalid
The returned payload could not be accepted under the measurement contract.
Provider failed
The named provider or intermediary failed for that sample.
Provider and interface fidelity
A RAG/API observation is not a signed-in consumer application session. A search-result observation is not a provider's model API. GeoCheckTool labels the route, intermediary, surface, access mode, and sample so those different observations are not collapsed into one provider-wide claim.
One sample does not establish a stable engine-wide result. Consumer interfaces, models, retrieval indexes, location, login state, experiments, and time can change the answer. Comparisons require a frozen question, surface, access mode, date, and sampling contract.
Website and third-party action boundary
GeoCheckTool does not publish external content automatically. It does not take over a customer CMS, create third-party accounts, pay platform fees, send outreach, manufacture reviews, or perform deceptive community or Wikipedia/Wikidata edits. It prepares reviewable action packages; authorized people remain responsible for approval and external execution.
No guaranteed outcome
GeoCheckTool does not guarantee publication, crawling, indexing, ranking, AI mention, AI citation, recommendation, conversion, or business improvement. A later change can support a dated comparison, but it does not by itself prove that one action caused the change.