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Stayfarer/The Position Check

The Position Check

Eighteen questions. About fifteen minutes, some of them spent in another tab looking at your own property the way a stranger would. At the end: a score, and a fix list in the order we'd work it.

⊕ Instrument plotted 18 Jul 2026 · free, no email wall, answers stay in this browser

A word on why this works the way it does. Tools that ask for your website address and promise to "scan" it from a webpage are mostly theatre — a page in your browser isn't allowed to read other websites, so they're guessing from whatever a server saw, and they've never met your WhatsApp response time or your booking mix at all. The honest version is this: we ask you to look at eighteen specific things, tell you exactly how to look, and score what you find. You'll learn more from the looking than from the score.

Answer honestly — nobody is watching. Your answers are saved in your own browser and nowhere else; this site's security policy (a CSP, the header that tells browsers what a page may do) forbids the page from sending data anywhere at all. The only way your score reaches us is if you email it to us yourself at the end.

Typing these personalises the questions below and fills the copy-ready searches — watch them change. Both stay in your browser, like everything else here.

Station A · Being found

Discovery is the layer where most independent stays lose without knowing it. These four questions are the ones our paid audit spends the most hours on.

Search Google for your property — the exact name — in an incognito window. Is your own website or your Google Business Profile the first thing that appears?

Copy the exact name into an incognito window — a normal window remembers you and flatters you. On your phone: new incognito tab, paste, look at what a stranger gets.

Search "your area homestay" or "your area guesthouse" — whichever you are. Do you appear anywhere on the first screen, in the map results or any list?

First screen only. Nobody scrolls to page two, and the engines know it.

Ask ChatGPT or Gemini: "where should I stay in your area?" Is your property named in the answer?

The ask buttons open a fresh chat so its memory of you doesn't colour the answer; for Gemini, paste the question in yourself. We publish our full engine-checking protocol — the same one our audits use — here.

Can you log in and edit your Google Business Profile right now — you personally, today?

If a cousin or an old agency set it up and holds the login, that's a "partly" at best. Access you can't use isn't access.

Station B · Taking the booking

Being found is half the job. These four are about who actually takes the booking once a guest has chosen you — you, or a platform charging you for the introduction you already earned.

Search "your property official website". Is the first result actually yours — not an OTA page wearing your name?

Copy, incognito, paste. Watch closely: OTA pages are engineered to look like the official answer.

Can a guest who finds you reach a direct booking path within 30 seconds — WhatsApp, booking page or phone, visible without digging?

Time it. Open your own Business Profile as a stranger and try to book without touching an OTA link.

During waking hours, do booking enquiries get a reply inside an hour, most days?

Honest self-report. Check your last ten WhatsApp enquiries and look at the timestamps — the data is sitting there.

Is there a stated reason to book direct — something a guest can actually read on your profile or site, not just something you'd honour if asked?

"We would give a better rate if they asked" is a no. Unwritten perks convert nobody.

Station C · What machines can read

Engines don't visit your property; they read about it. If the reading is slow, inconsistent or thin, they quote someone else's pages about you — usually a platform's.

On mobile data — not your own wifi — does your website load comfortably in about three seconds? (No website: answer no.)

Switch wifi off, open your site fresh. For a second opinion, Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool will grade it for you.

Are your name, address and phone written identically across your site, Business Profile and OTA listings — same spelling, same unit numbers, same phone?

Open all of them side by side. "Jalan" in one and "Jln" in another counts as a mismatch to a machine.

Are the photos guests see — on your Business Profile and listings — from the last twelve months?

Check the upload dates, not your memory of uploading them.

Do your public pages state the basic facts — number of rooms, capacity, parking, check-in hours, nearby landmarks — in plain written text?

Read your own site or profile pretending you're a guest with three questions. Count how many get answered without messaging you.

Station D · The review engine

Reviews are the richest source engines feed on when they answer "where should I stay" — volume, recency and your replies all get read.

Has a guest left you a Google review in the last 30 days?

Google reviews specifically — OTA reviews live inside the platform's walls and feed the platform's answers.

Do reviews get a reply from you within a week — even a short one?

Look at your last five reviews now. Count the replies.

Is there a system for asking — a message after checkout with your review link, sent every time, not just when you remember?

"We ask when guests seem happy" is a partly. A system survives a busy week; a habit doesn't.

Station E · Worth citing

When an engine answers "where to stay in your area", it quotes pages. If no good page anywhere mentions you, there is nothing to quote — and this station is also where we check whether anyone is measuring.

Does any page on the internet answer "where to stay in your area" with your property in it — your own area guide, a blog, a local roundup?

Search the phrase and read the first five results, looking for your name. OTA list-pages don't count — that's their shelf, not yours.

Are the questions guests actually ask — parking, halal food nearby, family rooms, late check-in — answered in writing somewhere public?

Scroll your WhatsApp for the last month's guest questions. That list is your content plan, verbatim.

Do you know last month's booking split — roughly what share came through OTAs versus direct?

"It's in the dashboards somewhere" is a no. Known means you could say the number out loud right now.

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