Guides
Guides for owners who want to understand
Short, sourced explanations of how Google, AI assistants, Meta, WhatsApp and payments work, written for people who run a business rather than an ad account.
- GuideAd Rank and Quality ScoreEvery time someone searches, Google runs an auction and ranks eligible ads by Ad Rank, a set of values built from your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, and the context of the search, so the highest bid does not automatically win. You then pay only what is needed to beat the advertiser just below you, and Quality Score is a diagnostic on top of that, not an input of the auction.
- GuideB2B cold email rules (France)In France, the CNIL explains that prospecting emails to professionals can rely on the sender's legitimate interest, without prior consent, as long as the message relates to the recipient's profession, the person was informed and can object simply; prospecting emails to consumers need prior consent, with narrow exceptions. In both cases every message must identify the sender and offer a simple way to refuse further messages, and anyone can object to prospecting at any time under the GDPR.
- GuideConsent Mode v2Consent Mode passes your visitors' cookie consent choices to Google tags so they adjust their behaviour; version 2 added two signals, ad_user_data and ad_personalization, that Google expects for visitors in the European Economic Area (EEA). Without consent signals for EEA users, you lose access to features such as personalised advertising and remarketing audiences, and measurement is reduced.
- GuideCore Web VitalsCore Web Vitals are three measures of real visitors' experience: LCP (loading, good at 2.5 seconds or less), INP (responsiveness, good at 200 milliseconds or less) and CLS (visual stability, good at 0.1 or less), assessed at the 75th percentile of page loads, separately on mobile and desktop. Google Search says they align with what its core ranking systems seek to reward, but good scores do not guarantee top rankings: relevance matters more.
- GuideDev, UAT and prod environmentsDev, UAT and prod are three separate copies of the same application: dev is where developers build and break things, UAT (user acceptance testing) is where you check a finished change with realistic data before customers see it, and prod (production) is the live version your customers use. Keeping them apart, with their own data, keys and addresses, is the simplest way to stop a test from reaching a real customer or a half-finished feature from breaking your business.
- GuideDocker Compose for small businessDocker Compose lets you describe an application and everything it needs (the app itself, its database, a background worker) in one YAML file, then start it all with one command, docker compose up. For a small business it is a simple, portable way to run several apps on one server you control, provided a few production settings are right: restart policies, health checks, secrets kept out of the code, and updates that replace one service at a time.
- GuideGA4 key eventsIn Google Analytics 4, a key event is an event you mark as particularly important to the success of your business, such as a purchase or a submitted lead form; a conversion is now the Google Ads side of the same idea, created from those events to measure campaigns and optimise bidding. For a shop, the backbone is Google's recommended e-commerce events, from view_item to add_to_cart, begin_checkout and purchase, with purchase marked as a key event by default.
- GuideGoogle Business Profile rankingGoogle ranks local results mainly on three factors: relevance (how well a Business Profile matches the search), distance (how far the business is from the person searching) and prominence (how well known the business is, including links and reviews). Google states that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, so the work is about complete, accurate information and a genuinely known business.
- GuideHelpful, people-first contentGoogle says its ranking systems aim to prioritise helpful, reliable information created to benefit people, not content made to manipulate search rankings. Using AI is not forbidden in itself, but Google warns that generating many pages without adding value for users may violate its spam policy on scaled content abuse, and that AI output must be fact-checked before publishing.
- GuideIndexNowIndexNow is an open protocol that lets a website tell participating search engines, in one simple request, that a URL has been added, updated or deleted; the participating engines listed on indexnow.org are Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep, and Google is not among them. For Google you still rely on sitemaps and Search Console, and with either system a submitted URL is not guaranteed to be indexed.
- Guidellms.txt and AI searchllms.txt is a proposed Markdown file placed at the root of a website to give AI agents a short, clean summary of the site and links to its key pages; it is a community proposal published at llmstxt.org, not a Google standard. Google states that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup, only pages that are indexed and eligible to show with a snippet.
- GuideMCP explainedThe Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard for connecting AI applications such as Claude or ChatGPT to external systems: your files, databases, business tools and workflows. A company exposes what the AI may use through an MCP server (tools it can call, data it can read, prompt templates), and each AI application connects to it; done well, your team can ask their AI assistant to look up a client or file a task in your own system, with access rules and a log of every call.
- GuideMerchant Center product feedA Merchant Center product feed is the list of your products, one line per item with set attributes (id, title, description, link, image link, availability, price and, depending on the product, brand, GTIN or MPN), that Google uses to show your products in Shopping ads and free listings. Most disapprovals come from a gap between the feed and the product page, above all a price or availability that does not match.
- GuideMeta ad formats and sizesMeta recommends 4:5 (1440 × 1800 px) for Feed ads and 9:16 (1440 × 2560 px) for Stories and Reels, with the top 14% and a large band at the bottom of vertical formats kept free of text and logos. The exact limits (file size, duration, text length, safe zones) differ by placement, so the table below gives Meta's figures for four common placements as checked on 6 October 2026.
- GuideMeta Conversions APIThe Conversions API (CAPI) sends events such as purchases directly from your server, website platform, app or CRM to Meta, instead of relying only on the Meta pixel in the visitor's browser. Meta recommends using it in addition to the pixel, sending the same events through both, and deduplicating them with a shared event name and event ID so each purchase is counted once.
- GuidePerformance Max vs SearchA Search campaign shows text ads on Google for keywords you choose, so you decide exactly which searches you pay for; Performance Max is a goal-based campaign where Google's AI chooses where to show your ads across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Google itself presents Performance Max as a complement to keyword-based Search campaigns, not a replacement, and most small businesses are best served by starting with Search and adding Performance Max once conversions are measured reliably.
- GuideScoping an MVPA good MVP (minimum viable product) is the smallest version of your product that real users can use for the one job that matters most, built after you have understood the problem and tested your riskiest assumption with a cheap prototype. Scoping it means writing down that one job, the few steps a user needs to complete it, and everything you deliberately leave for later, so the first version ships in weeks rather than drifting for months.
- GuideSEO or ads first?Start with ads when you need to test demand or get enquiries soon and you already have a page that converts; start with SEO when people already search for what you sell and you can wait weeks to months for results that keep coming without paying per click. Most small businesses end up doing both, but the first step depends on your timing, your budget and whether your website is ready to turn visits into customers.
- GuideStripe Checkout basicsPayment Links are no-code links to a Stripe-hosted payment page that you can share by email, social media, QR code or a buy button; Stripe Checkout is the same prebuilt payment page created from your own code through the Checkout Sessions API, which gives you control over each order. Payment Links run on Checkout, and in both cases Stripe hosts the card form, so card data goes to Stripe rather than through your servers; delivering the order reliably still needs a webhook on your side.
- GuideWhatsApp Business pricingSince 1 July 2025, Meta charges the WhatsApp Business Platform per delivered template message, at a rate that depends on the template's category (marketing, utility or authentication) and on the country calling code of the recipient. Replies sent inside the 24-hour customer service window that opens when a customer messages you are free, as are utility templates sent inside that window, while every marketing template is charged.
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