Terms of Use
Last updated: July 25, 2026 · Contributor terms version: 2026-07-14-contributors-v1
These terms are maintained and reviewed by Patrick Stox LLC. They have not been reviewed by legal counsel and do not provide legal assurance; they are intended to state the site's actual rules and records clearly.
Acceptance
By accessing or using this site, its free tools, community features, or Traverse browser extension, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use them. The limited one-question troubleshooting offer is also governed by the specific terms displayed next to its required checkout checkbox. Any broader consulting engagement requires a separate written agreement. Future paid software products and subscriptions will require their own product terms and any applicable refund and cancellation policy when they launch; they are not currently offered under these Terms.
Content — informational only
Everything published here (articles, guides, data studies, talks, and any other material) is provided for general informational and educational purposes only. Nothing on this site constitutes professional SEO, legal, financial, or business advice. Results mentioned are illustrative; your situation may differ. Reliance on any content is at your own risk.
AI-generated and AI-revised editorial content
An article or individual lens that has been generated or meaningfully revised by AI is labeled as AI-generated until a human reviews or revises that copy. An AI revision does not count as human review. The label identifies editorial provenance; it is not a warranty that labeled or unlabeled material is accurate, complete, current, or suitable for a particular decision. AI-labeled native content is excluded from the site's aggregate content counts until the label is removed after human review.
Free tools and outputs
The tools provide automated, point-in-time observations, calculations, simulations, or model-generated suggestions. Outputs may be incomplete, delayed, unavailable, or incorrect, and third-party platforms can change after a tool is updated. A clean result does not guarantee crawling, indexing, rankings, rich results, accessibility conformance, security, availability, legal compliance, or any business outcome. Verify material decisions with the relevant platform, qualified professional, and your own testing before acting.
Some unfinished features are visible only in the owner-controlled preview area. Their presence does not mean that they are offered to visitors or available for purchase.
URLs, files, and other inputs
You retain any rights you have in material you submit. You grant Patrick Stox LLC a limited, non-exclusive license to receive, copy, process, transmit, cache, and display that material only as reasonably necessary to operate the feature you requested, protect the site, and provide its result. Some tools run entirely in your browser; others send a URL or bounded input to the site's servers or service providers as described in the Privacy Policy.
When you ask a tool to fetch, crawl, render, test, or monitor a URL, you represent that the URL is public or that you are authorized to test it. You are responsible for the inputs you submit and for respecting third-party terms, intellectual-property rights, privacy rights, robots controls, and applicable law.
If an identified tool lets you bring an OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google API key, your browser sends the key and request directly to the provider you select. You are responsible for complying with that provider's terms, safeguarding the key, and paying any provider charges or usage fees. Patrick Stox LLC does not control the provider's availability, retention, output, pricing, or account decisions.
Traverse browser extension
Subject to these Terms, Patrick Stox LLC grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to install and use Traverse in object-code form for personal or internal business analysis. This license does not transfer ownership of the source code, branding, or other intellectual property. If you obtain Traverse through a browser store, that store's terms also apply; source code, local packages, and this section do not represent that Traverse is currently published in a store.
Traverse is local-first and operates on demand after you select an audit or other action. Its browser permissions can include active-page, tab, scripting, storage, context-menu, side-panel, request-rule, patrickstox.com, and optional target-origin access. A user-started check can make direct network requests to a public target, patrickstox.com, or a separately identified third party. A dedicated Traverse extension privacy notice describes the current permissions, requests, local records, retention, and deletion controls; it currently lives in the owner-only preview area pending a public store listing.
You may use Traverse only on pages, origins, and systems that are public or that you are authorized to inspect. Do not use it to bypass authentication or access controls, probe private systems without permission, or violate a target's terms or applicable law. Browser vendors, stores, target sites, and lookup providers control their own availability and rules. Patrick Stox LLC may update, disable, or discontinue Traverse or a feature, and a browser or store may control delivery or removal. You may remove it at any time. Audits and third-party results can be incomplete, stale, unavailable, or wrong and do not guarantee rankings, indexing, accessibility, security, legal compliance, or any other outcome.
Acceptable use
Do not use the site or tools to access private networks or nonpublic systems; bypass authentication, paywalls, technical controls, or rate limits; probe for vulnerabilities without authorization; distribute malware; collect personal information unlawfully; infringe another person's rights; impersonate another person; interfere with the site or a target service; or generate abusive, deceptive, or excessive traffic. Do not resell the site as an API or automated service without written permission. Patrick Stox LLC may rate-limit, block, suspend, remove, or investigate activity reasonably believed to threaten the service, another system, or another person.
Intellectual property
Except for user or expert contributions and identified third-party material, original content on this site — text, graphics, data, and code — is © Patrick Stox LLC, all rights reserved. You may quote brief excerpts with clear attribution and a link back to the source page. Reproducing full articles, republishing data studies, or scraping content without written permission is prohibited.
Reusable visuals
Original images or graphics that are explicitly marked “Reusable with attribution” are licensed by Patrick Stox LLC under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, share, or adapt an eligible visual, including commercially, if you credit the creator, Patrick Stox; link to the visual's canonical source page on this site; link to the CC BY 4.0 license; and indicate whether you made changes. You may provide that attribution in any reasonable manner, but not in a way that suggests Patrick Stox or Patrick Stox LLC endorses you or your use.
The reuse permission applies only to visuals carrying that mark. It does not cover article text, code, datasets, unmarked graphics, third-party screenshots, logos, trademarks, quoted material, user-provided inputs, or third-party data shown inside a visual. Those materials remain protected by their existing rights and terms.
Engagements and consulting
Except for the limited troubleshooting service described below, any consulting, advisory, or speaking engagement is governed exclusively by a separate written agreement between you and Patrick Stox LLC. Nothing else on this site creates a client relationship or any obligation on either party.
Limited troubleshooting service
The troubleshooting page offers review of one specific SEO issue or question for a $1,000 card authorization. Its displayed checkout terms define the scope, review target, acceptance and capture process, rejection and authorization-release process, delivery boundary, and case-by-case refund handling. You must affirmatively accept that versioned text before submission. Those checkout terms govern only that one-question service and do not create a retainer, implementation obligation, guaranteed outcome, or broader consulting relationship.
Stripe is the payment processor for this limited troubleshooting service when checkout is configured. Patrick Stox LLC remains the service provider and merchant responsible for the offer, fulfillment, refunds, invoices or receipts it must provide, and any applicable tax obligations; Stripe does not become the consultant or merchant of record merely by processing the payment. The checkout is currently unavailable while Stripe is unconfigured.
Planned digital products and subscriptions
Paid Runs, subscriptions, and customer workspaces are planned but disabled. If launched, eligible digital-product and subscription purchases are planned to use Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record, with Lemon Squeezy operating its hosted checkout and billing portal and handling payment collection and applicable sales tax or VAT as merchant of record. Patrick Stox LLC will remain responsible for delivering and supporting the product and for promises it makes outside Lemon Squeezy's checkout. Final product terms and a refund and cancellation policy will be presented for acceptance before purchase; preview drafts and roadmap descriptions are not offers or effective terms.
Community and expert contributions
If you submit an expert profile, annotation, answer, audio recording, correction, question, feature request, or other contribution, you retain your ownership rights. You grant Patrick Stox LLC a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, reproduce, format, transcribe, excerpt, display, distribute, and promote the contribution in connection with this site and its archives. You represent that you have the necessary rights and permissions and that your contribution is accurate to the best of your knowledge, lawful, and not confidential.
Contributions may be reviewed, edited for formatting or clarity, attributed to you, declined, unpublished, or removed. Patrick Stox LLC is not required to publish or preserve a contribution. You may request correction, an export of reasonably identifiable contribution data, unpublishing, or deletion through the contact form. Limited copies may remain where reasonably necessary for backups, legal or assent records, security, moderation history, fraud prevention, or the integrity of an existing discussion. A request to unpublish does not erase an assent or moderation record.
Expert applications, expert contributions, reader questions, inaccuracy reports, and feature requests require an unchecked, affirmative acceptance of the displayed contributor Terms and Privacy Policy versions. The site stores those versions, their server-owned hashes, the UTC assent time, contribution context, and limited request metadata. Records created before versioned assent was introduced, and owner-sourced quotes or unclaimed profiles, remain marked as unknown rather than being treated as accepted. A legacy contributor must accept the then-current policies before making a new contribution. Nothing submitted through a public or community feature creates a confidential, employment, partnership, or client relationship.
Third-party links and commercial disclosures
This site links to external websites for convenience. I do not endorse and am not responsible for the content, accuracy, pricing, terms, or practices of those sites.
No advertising or affiliate program is active today. If advertising, sponsorships, or affiliate relationships are introduced, paid placements and sponsors will be identified clearly, and affiliate links or material relationships will be disclosed clearly and conspicuously near the relevant recommendation, claim, or link. Those relationships will not change the obligation to describe opinions and evidence honestly.
Disclaimer of warranties
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, this site, its tools, Traverse browser extension, community features, content, and outputs are provided "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, availability, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Patrick Stox LLC does not promise uninterrupted operation, preservation of an input or result, delivery of a notification, or correction of every error.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Patrick Stox LLC will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, punitive, or consequential damages, or for lost profits, revenue, traffic, rankings, data, goodwill, or business opportunities, arising from or related to the site, tools, Traverse browser extension, community features, content, outputs, or inability to use them. Some jurisdictions do not allow particular exclusions or limitations, so these provisions apply only to the extent the law permits.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Patrick Stox LLC's total direct liability arising from or related to the public site, free tools, Traverse browser extension, or community features will not exceed US $100. This cap does not apply where a limitation is prohibited by law or where a separate written agreement expressly provides a different remedy.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.
Changes
These terms may be updated at any time. The "Last updated" date reflects the most recent revision. Contributor-relevant changes receive a new displayed version; a contribution form will require affirmative acceptance of that current version rather than treating silence or a prior contribution as acceptance.
Contact
Questions? Use the contact form.