Bookability check
How the bookability check reads a business
The check inspects four public layers for one business: its listing, its website, its reservation path and its ordering path. Each layer is recorded as observed, partial, unknown or not tested. Nothing is booked and nothing is paid for. The result describes what a machine could observe on the date of the run.
The four layers
Each layer is inspected on its own and reported on its own line. A strong listing does not fill in a missing reservation path, and an ordering page does not answer a reservation question.
Listing Does the business resolve to one place with a stable identity. Website Does an official site resolve, and does it expose services or a menu as structure. Reservations Is there a path a machine could follow towards holding a time. Ordering Is there a separate path for placing an order. How a layer is resolved
Resolution is deterministic: the same public artifacts, read the same way, produce the same rows on a re-run. Where a page is ambiguous, the row stays unknown.
No form is submitted, no account is created and no member of staff is contacted.
The four result states
Unknown is a statement about the observation, not about the business. A restaurant with a working phone-only reservation desk reads as unknown, and that is the correct result.
Observed The artifact was found and read on the run date. Partial Something was found, but not enough to describe the path. Unknown Nothing readable was found. The path may still exist off the public surface. Not tested The layer was out of scope for that run. What the check never does
No reservation is attempted. No order is placed. No payment is attempted. A run leaves no trace in anyone's booking system.
That constraint makes the method repeatable. It also caps what a result can say: it describes a reachable path, never a completed booking.
Status of this method
The check runs as a private pilot. Its output is not published, linked or used as evidence while the website-resolution step is still being fixed and reviewed by hand.
The method is published first because it is the part a reader can argue with.
Sources
- Local record: bookability check specification
A method you can argue with is worth more than a number you cannot check.