Anaks Labs
Article 10

Nine questions for the proposal in front of you

We are in this industry, so read this with that in mind and then apply every question to us as well. What follows is not a list of warning signs. It is nine things a practice owner can ask that have correct answers, together with the reply that should give you pause in each case.

Published · Anaks Labs

Why questions rather than warning signs

Lists of red flags do not survive contact with a competent salesperson, because the flags are known to the people selling and are removed from the deck. Questions work better, for one reason: a supplier who does this properly can answer them immediately, and a supplier who cannot has to improvise in front of you.

Ask them in a meeting rather than by email, and write down what is said.

The nine

  • 1. Where did that statistic come from — can you send me the original?

    Not a link to an article citing it. The publication itself, with its sample size. This single question does more work than the other eight combined, and there is a worked example of why further down.

  • 2. Can you guarantee a position?

    You want a no. A yes is not a stronger offer; it is a promise about a decision made by a company that has never heard of either of you. What can honestly be guaranteed is work — what gets built, what gets published, on what schedule.

  • 3. What will exist at the end of the first month that does not exist today?

    A list of nouns. Pages, posts, a report, a change to something specific. If the answer is a list of activities rather than artefacts — auditing, optimising, monitoring, strategising — you have no way to check at the end of the month whether it happened.

  • 4. What are you measuring, and against what baseline?

    The baseline is the part usually missing. Any figure at all can be presented as an improvement if the starting point is chosen after the fact, and a supplier who cannot tell you today what your current numbers are cannot tell you next year what they changed.

  • 5. Which of these numbers is measured and which is projected?

    Proposals mix the two freely and the mixing is rarely deliberate. Ask for each figure in the document to be labelled as one or the other. It is a reasonable request and the reaction to it is itself informative.

  • 6. If we part company in a year, what do I keep?

    The domain, the site, the pages that were written, the photographs. Ask what leaves with you and what does not, and get it in the agreement. This is the question practices most often ask a year too late.

  • 7. What happens to the work if I stop paying?

    Different from the question above. Some arrangements leave a practice with a site that stops functioning rather than merely stops improving. That may be acceptable to you, but it should be a thing you knew.

  • 8. How many practices like mine do you work with nearby?

    Search results and AI answers are ranked lists, and a supplier optimising two competing practices in one neighbourhood is working against one of them. Ask directly. An honest answer names the area or the practices; a reassurance without specifics is not an answer.

  • 9. Can I see something before I pay anything?

    Not a portfolio — something for you. What is offered in response to this question tells you what the supplier believes it is selling.

A worked example of question one

There is a figure circulating in our industry at the moment: that 59% of US adults use AI for health. It appears in decks, on agency pages and in cold emails to clinics.

It is a misreading of a real study, and it is roughly double the actual number. In the West Health–Gallup research, 59% is a share of the people who already use AI for health — specifically those using it to prepare questions before an appointment. The share of all US adults who have, in the study's own words, “asked AI for health information or advice” is 25%. Different base, same figure, twice the claim.

The study behind both readings: West Health–Gallup Center on Healthcare in America, a panel of 5,660 adults in the US aged 18 or older, in the field from 27 October to 22 December 2025. The 25% figure, its sample and the original → · Why we do not use the larger one →

We put this on our own sources page rather than in an article first, and for an ungenerous reason: 25% is the number we use and it is the smaller one. We could have quoted 59% like everybody else and every page on this site would have hit harder. Showing you where we chose the lower figure is the only way to demonstrate that the rule is real rather than stated.

The point for you is not this particular statistic. It is that a number can be sourced, published, technically traceable to a genuine study, and still be wrong by a factor of two in the way it is being used — and the only thing that catches it is asking for the original and reading which base it applies to.

What good answers tend to have in common

They are specific, they are boring, and they are checkable. A supplier who says "we will publish eight pages a month, here is the list of subjects, you can look at them on the fifteenth" has made a claim you can verify without expertise. A supplier who says they will establish your authority in the local market has made a claim that cannot be false.

Prefer the boring one. It is the only kind you can hold anybody to.

Questions

  • Is a guarantee ever legitimate?

    A guarantee about the work is. Promising that eight pages will be published every month and that you can go and look at them is a promise about something entirely inside the supplier's control. A guarantee about your position is a promise concerning a decision made by a third party who has met neither of you and takes instructions from neither.

  • What if they cannot say where a statistic came from?

    Treat the statistic as absent rather than as weak. A figure whose original publication cannot be produced has not been made a little less reliable by that; it has been withdrawn, and the sentence it was supporting is now unsupported.

  • Should I mind if they also work for my competitors?

    That is a judgement for you rather than a rule, but it should be asked and answered before anything is signed. An honest reply names the area or the practices concerned. A reassurance with no specifics in it is not an answer to the question that was asked.

  • Do these nine questions apply to Anaks Labs?

    All nine, and we would rather be asked. Put them to us, ask where every figure on this website came from, and check the answers against our sources page. If we cannot answer one of them, you have learned exactly what you would learn about anybody else who could not.

Read next

What we sell, itemised, with the one plan and both charges named → · Every figure we use, and the two we removed →