{"id":2064,"slug":"rule-honest-timelines-and-base-rates","title":"Rule — Attach honest timelines and base rates to every tier recommendation","kind":"rule","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["content-seo-timelines"],"reference_body":"**Rule:** Every widget recommendation carries explicit timeline + base-rate expectations.\n\n**Why:** Owners interpret a \"hard\" tier as \"impossible\" without realistic timeframes; a \"soft\" tier as \"instant\" without base rates. Both misframings collapse trust. Pena-Marin 2019 — precise unmet promises destroy source trust ([[precision-credibility-tradeoff]] topic).\n\n**How to apply:**\n\n- **Tier 1:** Weeks to a few months.\n- **Tier 2 local/reviews:** Weeks to a few months.\n- **Tier 2 content/authority:** 6-12+ months; only ~1.74% of new pages reach top 10 within a year ([[ahrefs-2025-1-7-percent-new-pages-rank]]).\n- **Tier 3:** High-variance, may return nothing — most content and most tools underperform. Case studies are survivors.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"content-seo-realistic-timelines","title":"Content/SEO realistic timelines — 3-6 months meaningful, 6-12+ months significant","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"ahrefs-2025-1-7-percent-new-pages-rank","title":"Ahrefs May 2025 — only 1.74% of newly published pages reach top 10 within a year (vendor)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-smb-widget-difficulty-to-work-june-2026","title":"Research brief: SMB widget difficulty-to-work mapping — three tiers of work for three sizes of gap (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-23T19:16:02.758Z","updated_at":"2026-06-23T19:16:02.758Z"}