You cannot read the code. That does not mean you are stuck.

AI visibility is the new gold rush, so the pitches are everywhere: guaranteed citations, a secret method, a piece of software that does it all for you. Some are real. Many are the old search-gaming crowd in a new hat, and the shortcuts they sell can get your site penalized, with the penalty landing on you long after they have moved on.

The hard part is that most of it happens where you cannot see it: behind-the-scenes tags, hidden text, bought links, a credit meter you did not understand when you signed up. You are a maker, not an engineer. So the question is not "can I inspect their code." It is "what can I hear, what can I ask, and how do they answer."

What the free scorecard does

• Runs your consultant or software tool through 11 red-flag checks, grouped by what you can hear in the pitch, what to ask and then listen for, and the traps that only apply to software.
• Gives you a live red-flag count and a plain verdict: green light, proceed with caution, or walk away.
• Builds you a personalized vetting kit: based on which flags fired, it hands you the exact questions to take into the conversation.
• Points you to free tools to check your own site, so you can see the things you cannot see yourself, with no login and no code.
• Lets you print or save a one-page summary to keep next to you while someone is pitching.

Built for makers, not engineers

Every check is written so a jeweler at the bench can use it. Nothing asks you to open a developer tool or read a line of code. The whole design assumes you know your craft and your customers cold, and that the technical side has been made to feel more mysterious than it needs to be. This is the vetting layer: it protects you at the exact moment you are deciding who to trust with the store you built.

Where this fits your other Red Pin Geek tools

Think of the tools as a staircase. This one is your free first step for a specific moment: someone is about to touch your site, and you want to know if they are safe.

• AI Visibility Score (free): score your whole store, so you know your real starting point.
• AI Page Visibility Check (free): a quick gut-check on a single page.
• Red-Flag Scorecard (free, this tool): vet a consultant or software tool before you pay them.
• The Citation Clock and Product Page scorecards (Premium): once your provider is safe, diagnose which structural gap is keeping a page from being cited.
• The AI Visibility + Agentic Commerce Audit (paid service): have me do the work for you, with a live crawl across the AI engines.

What changes when you use it

Why I built this

Who this is for

You, if you have read the guide and felt the recognition land, if you are about to hire someone or buy a tool and something in the pitch is nagging at you, or if you just want to protect your store before you spend a dollar. It is free, and it asks nothing technical of you.

Who should start somewhere else: if no one is touching your site yet and you simply want to know where your store stands, run the free AI Visibility Score first. If your provider already passed this scorecard and you want to know which page-level gap to fix, that is the Citation Clock Scorecard's job.

Spotting fakes is defense. Premium is offense.

The scorecard protects you from the wrong provider. Red Pin Geek Premium teaches you the thing the fakes cannot fake: how to measure whether real work is actually moving your citations, using the same method I built for my own store, days from publish to first citation, measured against a control.

One Premium subscription includes that method in full, plus every premium scorecard and worked walkthrough, weekly studio-side posts, and comment access on every paid post. One subscription, all the tools, no per-tool charges.

Questions