What it is
In plain words, before anything else.
There are three places a price can live on a website. In an image or a PDF, where no machine can read it. In the text of the page, where a machine can see a number but has no idea what it is for. Or in structured data, where the page says plainly that this service costs this much.
Only the third one is quotable. The second is the common case and it is worse than it looks: a machine that finds several numbers on a page and cannot tell which is a price will usually decline to say anything rather than risk being wrong.
What it costs you
The loss you never see happen.
You are never the answer to find me the best price, or how much does this cost near me. Those are the questions with a buyer already attached.
Deliberately hiding prices to force a phone call used to work because the alternative was calling three other places. The alternative is now asking once and being given the two businesses that answered.
Check it yourself
Do not take our word for it. Look.
This takes about a minute, costs nothing, and needs no account with us or anybody else. A finding you have confirmed with your own eyes is the only kind worth acting on.
- 1
Find a page on your site with prices on it and view the source.
- 2
Search for one of your prices as a number, without the currency symbol.
- 3
If it is not in the source, it is in an image and no machine has ever read it.
- 4
If it is there, search the same source for the word price or offers. If those do not appear near it, the number is loose text and a machine cannot tell what it refers to.
What we found
Out of 186 businesses we checked ourselves.
- 148 of 186
had no price a machine could find anywhere. Another eighteen had prices in the words on the page and nothing saying what those numbers were for.
Counted from our own checks of 186 real businesses, measured on 2026-09-10, one count per business. No business is named and none of their reports is public. The full write ups are in what we found.
How we fix it
What we do, and what we leave alone.
We publish your prices in the format assistants compare, taken from your own price list and nowhere else. You decide what is listed and what is left off.
If you would rather not publish prices at all, we say so in your report and leave it. It is a real business decision and not our call.
Next
The checks closest to this one.
- L3
Your hours and services, in a form a machine understands
A hidden block on the page that states your address, your hours and what you sell as facts, not as words on a picture. - P4
When an agent asks how much, does your business have an answer?
A price list is a document. A quote is an answer to a question somebody just asked. - P2
The assistant got as far as your checkout and stopped
Finding you was the easy part. Finishing the purchase is where almost every business loses the machine.
Is this one open on your site?
The free check runs all sixteen against your own address and tells you which came back clean, in the same plain words as this page.
Free. No signup. Takes about a minute.