> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.surfais.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Category, business model & scale
> Why your business model matters — it decides which AI-visibility recommendations actually apply to your brand.
Your brand profile is more than identity fields — four of them (industry, geography, business model, and scale) directly control which recommendations Surfais gives you when it audits your AI visibility. Get them right and your audit stays focused on tactics that fit your business. Get them wrong and you'll see advice that doesn't apply — a five-person local plumber told to build a Wikipedia page, or a national e-commerce brand told to chase a single city's local directories.
These four fields are set during [onboarding](/setup/onboarding) but live permanently on your brand's settings page, under **Category**. Nothing here is locked in — you can revisit and update it at any point.
## Why this matters
Surfais's audit framework routes its recommendations differently depending on your profile. A **Wikipedia article** is a sensible default for a mid-sized B2B SaaS company, but low-priority for a micro DTC brand with no press coverage. **Reddit engagement** is high-priority for most US brands chasing ChatGPT visibility, but gets substituted with a locally relevant forum for an Irish local-service business. **Trustpilot** is default-keep for consumer-facing brands, but replaced with G2 or Capterra for B2B SaaS.
None of this changes what Surfais measures — your AIS Score and visibility metrics are computed the same way regardless of your profile. It changes what Surfais *recommends* you do about them. Read [What audits check](/audits/what-audits-check) for how the audit uses this profile.
A missing or incomplete category profile doesn't just produce worse recommendations — it blocks AI Visibility Audits from running at all until all four fields are filled in. Scanning and scoring work fine without it; audits don't.
## Category
Four required fields, all needed together:
* **Industry** — free text describing what your brand does, e.g. "monitored alarm systems" or "B2B logistics SaaS". Specific beats generic.
* **Geography** — the country your brand primarily serves. Shapes the expected citation mix and drives the currency shown next to scale.
* **Business model** — one of nine options, covered below. The field with the widest effect on recommendations.
* **Scale** — an approximate revenue band in your local currency. Gates which authority signals are realistic — Wikipedia notability matters at enterprise scale, Trustpilot and niche directories matter more at SMB scale.
For multi-market brands, pick the market you'd most like to move the needle in — [Countries](/setup/countries) covers tracking scans across more than one market.
## The business model options
Business model is the field that most changes your recommendation playbook, so it's worth understanding all nine rather than guessing.
| Option | What it covers |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **B2C E-commerce** | A retailer selling to consumers online, usually stocking third-party brands — the brand-of-the-business is the *store* (Amazon, Currys, Argos). Leans on review aggregation, deals coverage, gift-guide content. |
| **DTC E-commerce** | A manufacturer selling its own product direct to consumers — the brand *is* the product (Allbirds, Glossier, Casper). Leans on founder story, process content, original product reviews. |
| **B2B SaaS** | Subscription software for businesses. Leans on G2/Capterra listings, LinkedIn thought-leadership, comparison content, Crunchbase. |
| **B2B Niche / Enterprise** | Specialist B2B outside mainstream SaaS — engineering, manufacturing, vertical software. Leans on trade publications, industry associations, LinkedIn, Crunchbase. |
| **Local Service** | Bound to a geography — plumbers, electricians, salons, dentists, alarm services. Leans on Google Business Profile, local directories, local press, Google Reviews. |
| **Professional Service** | Agencies, consultancies, law firms, accountancy practices. Leans on LinkedIn, original research, professional body listings, Crunchbase. |
| **Publisher / Media** | News outlets, magazines, content publishers. Leans on journalism awards, trust signals like NewsGuard, masthead bylines, original reporting. |
| **Agency** | Marketing/creative/digital agencies specifically — a professional-service sub-type broken out for marketing tactics. Leans on awards, case studies, founder thought-leadership, LinkedIn. |
| **Other** | Anything that doesn't cleanly fit. Falls back to generic baseline guidance — pick the closest neighbour above for a sharper audit. |
Confusing B2C and DTC is the most common mis-pick. Could the founder rebrand by changing the website without changing the product? That's DTC. Could they swap the product catalogue without changing the business? That's B2C.
Picking the "wrong" option doesn't break anything technically — it shifts which tactics the audit treats as default-keep versus lower-priority. If recommendations consistently feel off-target, revisit this field first.
## Geography and scale
The two work together with business model rather than independently. A local service business's scale is usually micro or SMB by definition — the model's geography-bound nature caps how large it typically gets. A B2B SaaS or DTC e-commerce brand can span micro to enterprise, and scale gates what's realistic: a Wikipedia push only makes sense once there's enough press coverage and notability, which usually holds from mid-market upward.
If your brand operates in more than one country, set geography to your primary market and use [Countries](/setup/countries) to configure which markets your scans actually cover.
## Brand name ambiguity
If your brand name is a common dictionary word, a short acronym, or shared with unrelated brands, toggle on **Brand name is ambiguous in AI search** on your brand's settings page. This tightens citation-extraction confidence so Surfais doesn't over-attribute unrelated mentions to you.
This is separate from [brand aliases](/setup/brand-aliases), which covers other names and domains *your* brand is genuinely known by — ambiguity is about other, unrelated brands sharing your name.
## Keeping your profile accurate
Revisit your category profile when your business pivots its primary revenue model (a B2C retailer whose private-label line grows to dominate revenue should switch to DTC), when you expand from single-location local service into multi-region (scale usually moves up alongside business model), or when audit recommendations consistently feel mis-targeted — try adjusting business model before assuming something else is wrong.
Changing these fields only affects *future* audits. Past audits stay pinned to whichever values were active when they ran, so revising your profile won't retroactively rewrite historical reports. See [Reading your audit](/audits/reading-your-audit) for how framework versioning works.
How the audit framework uses your category profile to select recommendations.
Track other names and domains your brand is legitimately known by.