Plays
A play is one specific change, on your site or elsewhere on the web, aimed at named topics and engines. It is the unit of work in Vercatus. Each play carries:
- the topics and engines it is aimed at;
- the evidence that calls for it, from the Why lenses, the Engine Briefs or the site audit;
- an expected gain with its basis;
- an effort: small, medium or large;
- steps and a draft you ask for when you want them: numbered steps and a draft you edit and send, or for a page to write, the page itself;
- an acceptance check a machine runs to see that the change is live.
Plays are generated every day from what the lenses found, and kept from day to day: a play keeps its identity, its status, its owner and its history while its evidence holds. A play the evidence no longer supports is marked stale, and it is never removed while someone has planned it or started it. Vercatus never changes a status a person set.
The nine kinds
Section titled “The nine kinds”Off the site
Section titled “Off the site”| Play | Comes from | The change | Shipped when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get named on a page engines read | A Sources gap: a page engines read for a topic that names competitors and not you, which a person can get onto | A list or comparison: pitch its editor, or ask the publisher about a sponsored placement. A directory: submit a listing. | The page’s newest version names your brand in its list |
| Take part in a community | A forum, Q&A site or subreddit that engines cite for a topic | Answer real questions in the threads engines cite, as yourself, within the community’s rules | A search finds a page of the community that names your brand |
| Get onto a review platform | Engines cite a review or directory platform for a topic and you have no profile there, or the briefs say there are no independent reviews | Create or claim the profile, and earn reviews | A search finds your profile on the platform |
| Make the brand unmistakable | Without searching, an engine confuses your brand with another, or knows your competitors and not you | One name and one-line category everywhere, Organization markup linking every official profile, a public knowledge-base entry where the company is notable, and an About page that says what the company is in its first sentence | The home and About pages carry the markup and a first paragraph that names the category |
| Correct a fact an engine gets wrong | A brief states something that contradicts your site: an old price, a wrong founder | Correct the page the engine took it from, when known, and state the fact plainly on your site | A newer brief states your version |
A Sources gap is a page you could actually be named on. These are never plays: an app or extension’s own store listing, a company’s own product or landing page, documentation, a video, a forum thread (a community play covers it), an encyclopedia that does not take a company’s own edits, and a “best of” list whose own publisher is one of the options it lists. Several pages of one publisher are one play, with the pages in its evidence. Pages are also matched to your market: a page in another language than the topics it is cited on is ranked far lower and says so in its title, and only a few such plays are shown, so a Hungarian site is sent to Hungarian pages first. Communities are counted from the addresses engines cite, so Reddit, which Vercatus does not open, counts. Its gain is an estimate and says so.
On your pages
Section titled “On your pages”| Play | Comes from | The change | Shipped when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank for a search engines run | A search engines run for a topic where the leader is in the top 10 of the index they read and you are not (a search that is only a rival’s name, such as its login page, is not one) | Create or improve the page that should rank for it; Vercatus can write the page | A page on your site has a title or main heading that answers the search |
| Write the missing page | A topic with demand that no page on your site answers | Answer it in the form that fits, with the reason: a new page, an article on your blog, a section or an FAQ entry on a page you name, or an update of the page already about it; Vercatus can write it for you, ready to edit | A page on your site answers the topic in its title or main heading; for a section, an FAQ entry or an update, the page named answers it in a heading, an FAQ question or its first paragraph |
| Fix a page | A site audit finding about your pages that engines read for a topic | The finding’s recommendation, with its evidence and steps | A later run reads the page and no longer finds the issue |
Foundations
Section titled “Foundations”Foundations are site-wide hygiene from the site audit that touches no measured topic: crawler access, rendering, performance and the like, one play per category. They are worth doing, no gain is claimed for them, and they sit below the plays that target topics. A Foundations play is shipped when a later run no longer finds its issues.
Expected gain, and its basis
Section titled “Expected gain, and its basis”Every play says what it should add to your Answer Share, in points, and always says why it thinks so. There are four bases:
| Basis | What it means |
|---|---|
| From verdicts | Plays like this one, on other sites, were measured: how often they won and their typical effect, pooled across sites by Vercatus Intelligence. The play shows the record, in this form (illustrative): “23 plays like this on 9 sites: won 61%”. |
| Observed | Measured on this topic’s own answers: how much more often brands appear when they are on this page, or in the top results for this search, than when they are not. It is labelled correlational: an association, not proof. |
| Estimate | A range with no point claimed, when nothing measured applies yet. The note says so. |
| None | Hygiene and corrections. No gain is shown. |
The gain is in points of the site’s Answer Share, weighted by the demand of the topics the play touches; the note gives the figure on the topic itself. An observed gain never counts the answers that read the page as evidence for it.
Plays are ranked by expected gain and confidence against effort. Plays with a measured gain rank above plays without one. Making the brand unmistakable, correcting facts and Foundations follow, in that order. Where a kind of play has a long record of no effect, it is ranked lower and says so.
Statuses
Section titled “Statuses”| Status | Set by | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Proposed | Vercatus | Generated from the evidence; nobody has decided on it. |
| Planned | A person | Agreed, usually with an owner and a due date. |
| In progress | A person | Being done. Its check runs daily. |
| Shipped | The check | The acceptance check passed: the change is live. |
| Measuring | Vercatus | Shipped, and its verdict window is open. See Verdicts. |
| Dismissed | A person | Not doing it, with a reason. |
Shipped comes only from a passing check, never from a person’s say-so. Whether a shipped play moved your Answer Share is its verdict, once the window closes.
Acceptance checks
Section titled “Acceptance checks”The check is what makes a play measurable: it dates the day the change became real. Checks are cheap, mostly a fetch or a cached search, and they run on a clock: daily for plays in progress, weekly for proposed and planned ones, and every few days for shipped ones, to confirm the change holds. Run the check now runs it at once.
Each check is strict on purpose. A page naming your brand somewhere in its text is reported, but only a place in its list passes. A page answers a search only when its title or main heading carries the search’s own words, not the words every page of your site shares. A fact is corrected only when a newer brief states your version; a brief that says nothing does not pass.
Steps, drafts and pages
Section titled “Steps, drafts and pages”Opening a play writes nothing. When you want them, press Write the steps for numbered steps from the play’s evidence (the page’s own text for a listing, the top results and the engines’ answers for a search, the finding for a page fix, the threads engines cite for a community), and the draft’s own button for one draft, in the language of your market:
- for a listing, a short, honest note to the page’s editor saying what the brand would add;
- for a community, the outline of an honest reply to the kind of question asked there, as yourself, never a text to post in several places;
- for the brand, Organization markup;
- for a fix, the change and its copy.
The steps and drafts never invent. A web address, an email address, a person’s name or a price that the evidence does not hold is refused; what cannot be verified is replaced by a placeholder for you to fill in. The draft is yours: you edit it and you send it. Vercatus never contacts an editor, a reviewer or a platform for you, never posts in a community, and never writes reviews or testimonials. No incentive is ever offered for a listing or a review.
A page for the plays on your site
Section titled “A page for the plays on your site”For Write the missing page and Rank for a search, the draft is the page itself, written by the content engine when you press Write the page. When the play’s form is a section or an FAQ entry on a page you have, it writes that one block for the page (Write the section, Write the FAQ entry); for an update, it rewrites the page named so it answers. It reads the questions people ask on the topic, the answers engines give, the pages engines cite and what they leave out, your own pages and facts, and what the engines reward; plans the page; and writes it in your market’s language with its title, meta description, URL slug, headings, FAQ, image alt text, internal links and Article and FAQ structured data. Before you see it, it is checked: the language, every figure and address against the facts it was given, its structure, its meta lengths, and claims the facts do not support. A fact it does not have, or a figure it could not confirm, is left as an [ADD: …] for you, never invented. You edit and publish it: Vercatus never publishes it. Each page is one of your plan’s pages written for plays a month; a page that fails its checks is not counted, and up to five versions are kept for each play.
Hand-offs
Section titled “Hand-offs”A play can be handed to the people and tools that do the work: as a brief for Claude Code or Codex, or as an issue in Linear, Jira, GitHub or Asana. An issue is kept on the play, so handing it off twice returns the same issue. See Linear and Jira. Hand-offs, the API and MCP come with Growth and the plans above it.
Held plays
Section titled “Held plays”When a site runs an experiment, plays on the topics held out are labelled held: they cannot be planned or started until the experiment ends, and they are left out of the top plays. Their status is unchanged. See Results.
See Working a play for the screens.