# Timelines, and when to stop or change target

How long to expect, what to tell the person, and when a campaign should end or start again on a different search or page. Never promise a place or a date: Google says plainly that "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" ([Do you need an SEO?](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo)).

## What Google says about timing

Everything below is quoted or taken from Google's own pages, each fetched for this skill:

- "Every change you make will take some time to be reflected on Google's end. Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months." And: "you likely want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects" ([SEO Starter Guide: The Basics](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide)).
- Crawling a page again "can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks", and asking again does not make it faster ([Ask Google to recrawl your URLs](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl)).
- A changed title can take "a few days to a few weeks" to be reprocessed ([Influencing your title links in search results](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link)).
- Small moves in position "can happen at any time", and there is "no guarantee that changes you make to your website will result in noticeable impact in search results" ([Debugging drops in Google Search traffic](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/debugging-search-traffic-drops)).

Google gives no timeline for a place, and neither does this skill.

## What to tell the person at the start

Say it once, plainly, and write it in the log under the aim:

> Changes reach Google over days to weeks, and Google advises waiting a few weeks before judging them. The campaign works the gates in order and reads the place every week. It cannot promise a place or a date; the log will show what was done and what the place was, side by side.

## The campaign's own pacing

These are the skill's rules, not Google's, chosen so a campaign neither gives up early nor runs on without a question:

- **Do not judge a gate's effect on the place in the week it ships.** A read proves the gate (mttr, or the person); the place is read weekly regardless, and the read-out never ties one to the other.
- **Request indexing after a change Google should see** (a new title, new sections), once, and write the date. Then wait.
- **Stalled after three weeks** with no gate opening and the place short of the aim, as SKILL.md defines it. Say so in the read-out and ask the person the questions below.
- **After all five gates are open,** give the place at least four weekly read-outs before deciding anything. The work is done; what is left is Google's.

## When to stop or change target

Ask the person, never decide alone. Each of these is a reason to raise it in the read-out:

| Signal | What it suggests | What to offer |
|---|---|---|
| Stalled twice in a row (six weeks), with the next gate's work blocked on something the person cannot give (links from outside, a template change) | The campaign cannot move | Pause it as Ended, with the reason, or agree a smaller piece of work that is possible |
| All five gates open, eight read-outs on, the place no better than at the start | The aim may be out of reach for this page, or the search wants another kind of page | End it and start a new campaign: a longer search for this page, or a page of the kind the results show |
| The page is still not shown for the search after several weeks with gates one to three open | Google does not see the page as an answer to this search | Check the intent again ([choosing the search](choosing-the-search.md)) and URL Inspection ([measuring with Search Console](search-console.md)) before any more work |
| Google shows another page of the site for the search, more often than this one | Two pages compete, and Google prefers the other | Offer to run the campaign on that page instead, as a new campaign |
| The results changed kind since the start (shops gave way to guides, or a map now fills the top) | The intent moved | Read the results again and tell the person; a new intent is a new campaign |
| The person's business changed (the product is gone, the service area moved) | The search no longer matters to them | End it |
| At the aim and Holding for eight weeks | Done | End it, as SKILL.md says, and offer the next search |

## Changing target is a new campaign

An aim, a search or a page is never changed inside a running campaign:

1. Write the last read-out of this campaign, set it to Ended, and write why.
2. It stays on `campaigns.md` with its result: reached its aim, with its time to rank, or ended without. A campaign that ended short stays in the count of the person's mttr.
3. Start the new one from "Before you start" in SKILL.md, with its own start date and its own starting place. Gates already open on the same page carry over only if a fresh read proves them again; write that read as their proof.

This keeps time to rank honest: a target moved halfway would make any campaign look quicker than it was.