The dictionary
Every term, one meaning
Four different figures on this page were once all called "successful". Every term below now means exactly one thing, everywhere on this instrument and in every JSON mirror.
These definitions have governed every figure published for the last 91 days.
Room 10 of 10
The measures
Things this instrument counts
Each of these is a number somewhere on the site. The rule column is the exact test applied; the caution column is what the figure must not be taken to mean.
| Term | Meaning | Rule applied | What it is not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logged attempt | A request arrived at a citation surface and we recorded a row. | Any row in the citation table. | Not evidence that anything was sent back. |
| Served read | Content left our server and went to a named AI crawler. | Status 200 or 206, bytes above zero, agent not withdrawn from credit. | Not evidence that anyone read it, understood it, or named us anywhere. |
| Withdrawn from credit | An agent whose reads are recorded and shown but excluded from totals. | Applied to Amazonbot for ignoring published limits. | Not deleted, not hidden, and for a period not even refused. |
| Door knock | A recorded request at a registered machine entry point. | Any row in the door-knock table. | Not a citation and not a person. Undercounted before 7 August 2026. |
| Citation anchor | A published signpost a machine can land on and quote. | A row in the published anchor file. | What we offered, not what anyone took. |
| Followback | A later request carrying the trace of an earlier offer. | Match confidence of strong. Weaker matches are published but never quoted. | Not a purchase and not a citation. |
| Recorded session | A row in the session table, of any kind. | Every row. No filter is possible. | Not a person. The table classifies every row it has ever written as human, so the column carries no information. |
| AI-referred session | A browser arrived and its referrer named an AI answer surface. | Session flagged AI-attributed, or first referrer class is an AI surface. | Evidence the link was followed, not that an AI recommended us. |
| Image pull | A named AI or search crawler requested an image file. | A row in the asset-knock table whose agent class is a named AI or search crawler. | A floor, not a count. Capture has been intermittent since 20 June 2026. |
| Our own probe | Traffic we generated ourselves to check a surface still answers. | Traces flagged as verification test traffic. | Not demand. Subtracted wherever demand is reported. |
| Citation token | A minted, verifiable record that our material was used in an answer. | Requires evidence of use inside an answer. | None has ever been issued. The count is zero and grows only on proof. |
These definitions govern every page on this instrument and every JSON mirror.
The four attributes
What every number must carry
A figure with no provenance is a claim, not a measurement. Every number on this instrument carries four attributes, and the component that renders numbers refuses to render one that is missing any of them.
| Attribute | What it states | Why it is required |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Which table or authority the figure was read from. | A figure printed beside the wrong source line is how six errors survived for seven weeks. |
| Window | The period covered, written as dates. | Relative phrases like "week to date" go stale the moment they are cached. |
| Rule | The exact test applied to decide what was included. | Without it, two figures counting different things can share a name. |
| Freshness | Live or frozen, written as a word. | Colour alone is not readable by everyone, and a frozen figure looks identical to a live one. |
Enforced by the rendering components themselves: a figure missing any attribute does not render.
Retired terms
Words we no longer use
These appeared on earlier versions of this page. Each was either ambiguous, or asserted more than the evidence supported. They are listed so that anyone holding an older copy can translate it.
| What earlier versions did | Why it was wrong | The term used now |
|---|---|---|
| Four separate labels, all built on the word "successful", each attached to a different figure. | A reader could not tell which of the four a given number belonged to, and two of them implied a citation had occurred when none had been measured. | Served read, with one rule. |
| A long phrase describing unfiltered crawler requests, never defined anywhere on the page. | It carried no rule, so it could not be checked. | Logged attempt. |
| An informal phrase for arrivals at machine entry points. | It was used for two different tables in two different sections. | Door knock, tied to one table. |
| A label that read as a category of agent rather than a decision we had taken. | It described the crawler instead of describing our own choice to exclude it, and the page claimed a block the server was not enforcing. | Withdrawn from credit, with the block now enforced. |
| A two-word phrase for a token, one word of which was redundant. | A token is minted by definition. The extra word suggested a second kind existed. | Citation token. |
| Session counts published as though they described people. | The session table classifies every row it has ever written the same way, 216,095 of 216,095, so the label could not be earned. | Recorded session, with only the AI-referred subset called people. |
The retired labels themselves are deliberately not reproduced here. They are checked for by the build gate, and reprinting them would reintroduce the ambiguity this room exists to remove.
The governing rule behind all of this: ambiguity is fixed by definition, never by deletion. No figure from earlier versions of this page has been removed. Every one has been given a name, a rule, a window and a source, and moved into the room where it belongs.
