How we work
How we count a result
Every agency sends you a report with numbers on it. Almost none of them tell you what the numbers mean. So before we show you a lead count, here is exactly what we counted and what we threw out.
This page exists because "we generated 400 leads" is not a claim, it is a shape. Four hundred what. Counted when. Including the ones that were somebody selling SEO services through your own contact form?
The rules below are the ones we count by on your account. They are deliberately strict, which means the numbers we report come in lower than they could. We would rather hand you a smaller number you can trust than a bigger one you cannot.
What counts, and what does not
| We count | We do not count | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A form filled in by a real person | Forms filled in by bots | Automated junk hits every contact form on the internet. We catch it with a hidden field a person never sees and a robot always fills in, and we drop it before it reaches your count rather than quietly cleaning it up later. |
| A phone call longer than 30 seconds | Calls shorter than 30 seconds | Under half a minute is almost always a wrong number or somebody hanging up. Counting those makes your lead number look better and tells you nothing. |
| One person, once, per enquiry | The same person submitting twice | Deduplicated on contact detail within a rolling window, because a customer who fills in the form and then calls is one lead, not two. |
| Enquiries for work you actually do | Recruitment, vendor pitches, spam | A resume through the quote form is not a lead. Neither is another agency pitching you through your own site. |
| Money on jobs you tell us closed | Money we worked out from a lead count | Plenty of agencies take your lead count, multiply it by a guess at how many you close and a guess at your average job size, and put the result on a slide as revenue. We do not. If you did not tell us the job closed, it is not in the number. |
None of this is a guarantee of what your account will do. It is a statement of how the arithmetic works, so that when you compare our reporting to somebody else, you know what you are comparing.
Where the credit goes, and where that breaks down
When a lead comes in, we credit whatever brought them to your site most recently. That is the normal way of doing it, and it is wrong in a way you should know about. Somebody finds you on Google in March, sees your van at a neighbour house in June, then types your name straight into their phone in July. Which one got you that job? Honestly, all three, and no tracking tool can split it.
So we give you both: where the credit landed, and your total enquiries regardless of source. When those two disagree, that is worth talking about rather than explaining away. If your calls went up and nothing online can account for it, something out in the world is working and you want to know what it was.
What we will not do with your numbers
We will not report a percentage without the underlying counts. A 40% improvement on five leads is two leads, and the percentage exists to hide that.
We will not change a definition mid-engagement to make a chart improve. If a definition needs to change, the historical numbers get restated on the same definition, and the report says it happened.
And we will not report on a metric your business cannot act on. Impressions are a diagnostic, not a result. If a report is full of numbers that cannot change what you do on Monday, the report is decoration.
You get the raw numbers, not just our summary of them
Your accounts stay in your name. The call tracking, the website analytics, the ad accounts if you run them. We get access, you keep ownership, and if we ever stop working together you do not lose your history along with us.
That matters more than it sounds. The most common way a contractor gets stuck with an agency is that all the numbers live somewhere only the agency can see, so leaving means starting from zero. Ask anybody you are considering who owns those accounts, and get the answer in writing.
Everything Fervor sells, with prices: the services hub. Or start with a scored read of your own site through the Site Inspection.