Tier applicability and deliverable map

The original 1–14 numbering and names are retained. Tier 13 remains retired. Names such as “AI DOMINATION” and “LOCAL DOMINATION” are legacy packaging labels, not literal promises of platform outcomes. No prices, quotas or contractual terms were changed. Modules are selected by applicability; they are not an instruction to sell every task to every client.

Tier	Research additions to consult	Required inputs	Completion evidence
01 — FOUNDATION	URL lifecycle; release contracts; content delivery; crawler identity; field performance	Route inventory, existing URLs, stack, access policy	Approved route behavior and captured pre/post-release checks
02 — SEARCH VISIBILITY	Canonicalization; metadata; schema lifecycle; Search Console analysis	Target pages, consumer, country, eligible features	Indexability evidence and applicable metadata/schema validation
03 — AI DOMINATION	Engine control matrix; Google/Bing AI performance; AI observation and attribution	Client permission policy and actual reporting availability	Separate crawl, impression, citation, referral and lead evidence; no visibility guarantee
04 — ENTITY & AUTHORITY	Source provenance; evidence governance; fact register; organization schema	Verified business facts and source ownership	Consistent entity references and traceable claims; no fabricated authority
05 — LOCAL DOMINATION	Location evidence; regional eligibility; real-storefront schema boundary	Real staffed locations, service areas and original local evidence	Only justified location pages and eligible business representations
06 — CONTENT & MULTIMEDIA AUTHORITY	Source provenance; social/video property reporting; publisher preferences	Editorial ownership, original evidence, image/video rights	Attributable content and platform-specific measurement
07 — SOCIAL & COMMUNITY	Social/video properties; AI referrals; client-scope acceptance	Verified accounts, publication rights and attribution constraints	Measurable platform work without guaranteed backlinks or engagement
08 — DATA, ANALYTICS & CONVERSION	GA4; metric contracts; AI attribution; observation protocol	Property access, event definitions, consent requirements	Documented denominators, attribution scope and qualified-lead events
09 — MONITORING & INTELLIGENCE	Research maintenance; crawler observability; source-date conflict handling	Owner, review triggers, permitted logs and retention	Review ledger and alerts defined; scheduling is separate implementation
10 — WORKFLOW & OPERATIONS	Release contracts; rollback; client scope; agent security; offline tools	Approvals, deployment path, owners and rollback authority	A reproducible release evidence packet and scoped acceptance
11 — MARKETPLACE & RETAIL	Commerce consistency; merchant schema; URL lifecycle; faceted URLs	SKU/offer facts, feeds, platform and country eligibility	Agreement between visible prices, feeds and structured data
12 — INTERNATIONAL	Regional Search eligibility; localized URL contracts	Target markets, languages, page equivalence, local expertise	Validated locale mappings and market-specific acceptance
13 — RETIRED	No reactivation or replacement invented	Existing retirement decision	Retirement preserved
14 — ADVANCED & IMMERSIVE	Agent-access security; client scope; release contracts; performance	Actual audience need, capability, threat model and budget	Bounded prototypes and tested access, not novelty-based ranking claims

Scope rule

Choose a tier only after the project intake and baseline. An existing WordPress business site, a Next.js application, a physical storefront, a service-area business and a multiregional store do not share the same route, schema or account obligations. Deliverable acceptance belongs in the project contract; ranking and citation outcomes belong in a separately defined measurement plan.

Use the client scope module, project intake example and release acceptance example. The older item counts were not re-certified as universally necessary or sufficient.