Rule — Attach honest timelines and base rates to every tier recommendation

Rule: Every widget recommendation carries explicit timeline + base-rate expectations.

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).

How to apply:

• Tier 1: Weeks to a few months.
• Tier 2 local/reviews: Weeks to a few months.
• Tier 2 content/authority: 6-12+ months; only ~1.74% of new pages reach top 10 within a year (Ahrefs May 2025 — only 1.74% of newly published pages reach top 10 within a year (vendor)).
• Tier 3: High-variance, may return nothing — most content and most tools underperform. Case studies are survivors.