The real question is not whether you are important enough. It is whether enough public material exists for a system to form a settled opinion about you. Twelve weighted questions answer that. About a third of people who answer honestly are told to wait, and the five specific refusals are listed here so you can rule yourself out in five minutes.
The question behind the question
Most people asking “will this work for me” are actually asking one of two different things, and they need different answers.
The first is am I important enough. Almost always yes, and it is the wrong question. Fame is not the bar. Four of the eight people on our evidence page are not famous in any general sense.
The second is is there enough public material about me for a system to form a settled opinion. That is the real question, it has a checkable answer, and it is what the rest of this guide is about.
Systems are not deciding whether you are impressive. They are deciding whether they are certain. Certainty comes from independent sources agreeing, and it is entirely possible to be genuinely accomplished and completely uncertain to a machine.
The five refusals
Roughly a third of applicants get told not to start. Here is exactly why, so you can rule yourself out in five minutes rather than after a discovery call.
1. Nobody searches your name
Some businesses are found entirely through a category search, a marketplace listing or a referral that ends in a phone call. If a buyer never types your name and never asks an assistant about your field, this work has nowhere to land.
2. Your public record is genuinely thin and you need this soon
The evidence has to exist before it can be organised. Ninety days is the minimum before anything moves and six to twelve months is the honest range. If you need it live for a fundraise in March, the answer is no and the honest thing is to say so.
3. You want the box, not the evidence
That order does not work and cannot be made to work by spending more. Every mechanism that produces a panel is a mechanism that reads public evidence.
4. You are about to change what you do
Records are slow to build and slow to update. Making a system confident you are one thing, six months before you become another, is an expensive way to make your own repositioning harder.
5. You are hoping this repairs a reputation problem
It will not. It makes you comprehensively easier to find, including the parts you would rather nobody found. If there is a problem in your public record, deal with that first and separately.
A third is not a number chosen to sound principled. It is what makes the refund at the end survivable, and it is why the gate below is built to be able to say no.
Run the gate
Twelve questions, weighted by how much each actually moves the outcome. It is built to be able to tell you no.
Answer every line. A half-filled score flatters you, which is the opposite of what this is for.
What the bands mean
| Score | Verdict | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 75–100 | Yes, and it is a claim job | The evidence exists and mostly agrees. Ownership and correction, measured in weeks. Say so when you apply, because it changes the price. |
| 45–74 | Yes, six to twelve months | Real material, scattered. The normal starting point and the one the engagement is designed for. |
| 20–44 | Not yet | Six months of foundations first, then run this again. Taking your money here would be selling you a refund with extra steps. |
| 0–19 | No | Not enough public evidence for any system to have an opinion. Publish, speak, get written about by people who are not you. |
The weights are ours and they are opinionated. The top four are worth eighteen of the forty available points between them, which is the whole argument of this guide in one picture.
Now check what a machine can actually see
The gate measures what you know about yourself. This measures what is publicly readable, which is a different and often unpleasantly smaller number.
More than one result means more than one record answers to that name. Whoever holds the highest match strength owns the name in practice, and if that is not you, it is the specific obstacle in your way.
A slow case, published on purpose
Ramesh Pattni has an Oxford doctorate, published academic work, a professional practice and a listed institutional role. He is exactly the kind of person this should be straightforward for.
His entity record is live. His panel still does not fire on his bare name, and it has been the slowest in our set.
We publish this because a page that only shows finished work is telling you about its marketing rather than its work. It is also the most honest possible answer to “will this work for me”: sometimes it works slowly, and nobody can tell you in advance which case you are.
Sagar Kathrotiya is in the same position with the opposite profile: eleven images, five platforms, a podcast with real reach, structure complete. Also still building.
The structure is done. What is still accumulating is other people saying their names in public, recently, in places already being crawled. That is the only variable left, and it is the one that takes months.
Questions people ask next
What if I score badly but I still want to start?
Then we say no, and it is not negotiable at the bottom band. A build on a near-empty record produces a twelve-month refund and a client who has lost a year. Score in the middle band and want to start? That is the normal case and the answer is yes.
Does having a common name disqualify me?
No, it changes the price and the timeline. A contested name means separation work comes before anything else, and that is a different quote. Say so when you apply rather than after.
I run a company rather than a personal brand. Does this apply?
Both entities matter and they are separate. A company earns a record through business signals: reviews, a Business Profile, press, registration data. A person earns one through personal signals. If buyers ask about the founder, and in most professional services they do, the person is the one worth resolving.
Can I do this myself?
Yes, and the method is on this site in full. It is not secret and the people who wrote the book on it say so themselves. What you are paying for is twelve months of somebody doing the outreach, the follow-up and the quarterly checking without dropping it in month four, which is when almost every self-run version dies.
What if I already have a panel?
Different job, shorter job, different price. Correcting and locking an existing panel means claiming it, feeding correct evidence into the sources being read, and using the suggest-an-edit route properly. Say so at the start.
Run your name through the signal scan, then build your Person schema. Both are free and neither asks for an email. If the reading says you are ready, the work page has the price and the terms.