Ever tried to hire an SEO agency?
You get a proposal deck. Inside it there's a case study with a green line going up and to the right, a screenshot of a tool you can't log into, and a traffic figure with no date on it. Maybe there's a logo wall. Maybe there's a review on a directory that also happens to sell placement on that directory.
None of it is checkable. You can't tell whether the chart is real, whether it belongs to a client who left two years ago, or whether the agency paid to be on the list you found them on.
So we built something that answers a much smaller question, but answers it honestly.
The question
Can this SEO agency rank their own site?
That's it. Not "are they good." Not "are they the best." Just: do they get real organic traffic to their own domain, and can we see the actual numbers?
Because if an agency can't rank for themselves, why would you trust them to rank you?
That's the whole idea behind Ori's List — a directory of SEO agencies where the performance data comes from Google, not from the agency.
How it works
An agency connects their own Google Search Console property to Ori's List with read-only access. We confirm two things: that the property matches the agency's public root domain, and that the connecting account actually holds owner or full-user permission on it.
Then we publish what Google says:
- Monthly clicks, with the peak month marked
- 28-day, 90-day and 12-month click totals
- Year-over-year change and a trend label
- How many distinct queries drove clicks, and how many pages received them
- Device split and how many countries produced clicks
- How many months of Search Console history exist
- How many consecutive weekly checks the listing has passed
No Ahrefs screenshots. No estimates. No self-reported figures. You're not taking the agency's word for it.
Verification isn't a one-time award
This is the part I care most about.
Most badges in this industry are bought once and displayed forever. Ori's List re-checks every listing weekly. If access is revoked, the property disappears, permission is lost, or the domain stops matching — two consecutive failures and the check mark plus all published performance data come down.
The listing itself stays. The proof doesn't.
Connecting once is not enough.
Verified means real, not good
Here's the line that makes agencies nervous, and it's the one I'd least like to remove.
If a verified agency's traffic is falling, they keep their listing, they keep their data, and the listing gets labelled Declining. We don't hide it. We don't quietly delist them.
Ori's List does not claim any agency is good. It verifies that a number is real. Those are different claims and conflating them is exactly what's wrong with the rest of the category.
The numbers can't be bought
There are two plans:
| Free — $0 | Pro — $49 one-time | |
|---|---|---|
| Search Console connection | Required | Required |
| Weekly sync + full performance data | ✓ | ✓ |
| Service categories | 1 | Up to 4 |
| Verified check | — | ✓ |
| Website link | None at all | ✓ dofollow |
| Embeddable badge | — | ✓ |
| Placement | Lowest | Highest |
Read the second row again: the data is identical on both plans. Free isn't a teaser. Pro buys a check mark, a link, a badge, top placement and up to four categories. It never buys a better number.
You connect first and pay after. Nothing is charged until Google confirms domain ownership, and the check only appears once the first weekly sync passes. There's no way to buy a check without passing a check — at any price.
$49 is one-time, by the way. Not a subscription.
What we don't touch
The most common question, and the fair one: does connecting expose client sites?
No.
- Access is read-only — the
webmasters.readonlyscope, nothing else - Only the agency's own root domain is accepted; client properties are rejected
- We store aggregates. Query strings themselves are never shown. Impressions, average position and CTR are never stored at all
- Disconnecting wipes the stored data
- Removal on request, no questions asked, within one business day
The full breakdown lives on the data policy page, and it's worth reading before you connect anything.
Where it stands today
I'll be straight about the current state, because a trust product that oversells its own launch has already lost the argument.
There are 26 agencies listed right now, seeded from public information — Aira, Animalz, Seer, Siege Media, Onely and others. Those seeded listings are unclaimed: no check, no link, no performance data. Verification just opened, and one listing is verified so far.
That's the honest picture. The directory gets more useful with every agency that connects, and useless if anyone can pay their way into it — which is why the mechanism above is built the way it is.
If you're hiring an agency
Browse orislist.com/agencies. You can filter by trend (growing, stable, declining), by traffic band, and by category — nine of them, from Local SEO to SaaS SEO to Technical SEO. Filtering agencies by whether their own traffic is going up isn't something you can do anywhere else, and it's a faster first pass than reading twelve proposal decks.
If you run an agency
Connect your Search Console and list for free: orislist.com/connect. Two minutes, read-only, your own domain. If your numbers are down, list anyway — we publish that too, and buyers who see a declining agency being honest about it tend to draw the conclusion you'd hope for.
If your agency is already listed as unclaimed and you'd rather it weren't, email us and it's gone within one business day.
Simple idea, real data, better hiring decisions. We keep it simple.
