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What You Do vs What You Don’t Do (Disambiguation)

Most websites lose customers (and AI visibility) for one dumb reason: they never clearly say what they do and what they don’t do. So people guess. AI guesses. And both guesses are usually wrong.

Short answer

“What you don’t do” is not negative. It’s a classification filter. If you don’t set boundaries, you get miscategorized, mis-sold, and misunderstood.

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Disambiguation is boundary-setting

People think disambiguation is an “SEO thing.” It’s not. It’s an expectation thing. If your buyer has the wrong expectation, your page didn’t fail at writing — it failed at definition.

Why “what you don’t do” matters more than you think

Here’s what happens when you only describe what you do: you trigger a bunch of adjacent assumptions. Prospects fill in the blanks with whatever they’ve seen before. AI systems do the same thing, just faster and at scale.

  • Humans: “Oh, so you also do X, Y, Z… right?”
  • AI: “This looks like category A… probably.”

“Probably” is where you lose. You lose the right leads, you attract the wrong ones, and you get lumped into the wrong bucket when AI is summarizing options.

The 2-line disambiguation framework

If you want a clean, non-cringe way to do this, use this format:

Disambiguation lines (steal this)

We do: [your actual deliverable / outcome].
We don’t do: [the most common mistaken assumption].

That’s it. Two lines can save you weeks of wrong conversations.

What to include in your “we don’t do” list

Don’t make it a random list of services you “don’t offer.” Make it a list of confusions you want to kill. The best “don’t do” bullets are the ones you keep repeating on sales calls.

  1. Adjacent services people assume come bundled
  2. Common agency promises you refuse to make
  3. Execution categories you don’t touch
  4. Responsibility boundaries (who owns what)
  5. Outcome boundaries (what you will and won’t guarantee)

Examples: clear vs vague

Example 1: “Marketing consultant”

Vague: “We help brands grow.”

Clear: “We build AI-search-ready content hubs that make your offers easy to classify and recommend. We don’t run paid ads or manage your social media.”

Example 2: “Web design”

Vague: “We do full-service web.”

Clear: “We design and build Shopify storefronts focused on speed and conversion. We don’t do custom backend systems or ongoing dev retainer work.”

Example 3: “SEO”

Vague: “We do SEO.”

Clear: “We build AI clarity and entity-focused site structure so AI systems can understand and cite you. We don’t sell backlink packages or ‘rank in 30 days’ nonsense.”

How this ties directly to AI Search

AI systems are not reading your site like a human reads a blog post. They’re trying to answer: what is this, and where does it belong?

“We don’t do X” is a negative constraint. Negative constraints reduce ambiguity. Less ambiguity means higher confidence. Higher confidence means better matching, better summaries, and better citations.

Where to place disambiguation on your site

Put it where it actually does the job:

  • Service pages: right after the first definition paragraph
  • Homepage: near the primary value proposition
  • About page: after the “what I do” story, before the pitch
  • Discovery call page: as a pre-filter (saves everyone time)

Quick self-check

If someone could read your H1 + first paragraph and still ask “So are you basically an agency?” — you need disambiguation.

Practical template: copy/paste and fill it in

Use this as a starting point. Don’t overthink it.

  • I do: [specific outcome] for [specific audience] using [specific mechanism].
  • I don’t do: [top mistaken assumption #1].
  • I don’t do: [top mistaken assumption #2].
  • I don’t do: [top mistaken assumption #3].

If you can’t write the “don’t do” bullets, that’s a signal: your positioning is probably still too broad.

Related

FAQ’s

  • It means you define your service by drawing a hard boundary: what you deliver, and what you explicitly do not provide.

  • Because ambiguity is the enemy. If you don’t set boundaries, people (and AI) will guess — and they’ll guess wrong.

  • Not exactly. Niching down is about audience or category. Disambiguation is about eliminating misclassification and wrong expectations.

  • Near the top. If it’s buried, it doesn’t stop the wrong leads, and it doesn’t help AI classify you fast.

  • It can reduce quantity. That’s the point. It increases quality by filtering out the wrong buyers and wrong interpretations.

  • Simple, direct, and common-confusion-focused: “We don’t run paid ads.” “We don’t do branding.” “We don’t do full-service marketing.”

  • AI systems are constantly classifying. Negative constraints (“not X”) reduce category confusion and improve confidence in matching and citations.

  • List the top 5 things prospects assume you do that you don’t. Then write one line for each: “We do X. We don’t do Y.”