Privacy notice

Marius Kerkvliet, trading as AnswerGround, Herenstraat 83A, 2313 AG Leiden, the Netherlands, KVK 99702738, is the controller for the personal data described here. Questions and requests: info@answerground.nl.

Accounts created for the earlier AnswerGround product (AI citation tracking) carry over to this service with the same sign-in: the same email address and password, or Google sign-in. That product has been discontinued. Its data is kept under the same retention rules as the rest of this notice.

Account: your email address and a hashed password, or your Google sign-in, to let you sign in and to contact you about your account. Legal basis: performing our agreement with you.

Free scans from the homepage, without an account: the business and keyword you scan, the country your request came from, and a code made from your IP address that changes every day, used only to limit free scans per visitor. If you unlock the full result, your email address and whether you asked for product email. We email you the link to your result. Legal basis: taking the steps you asked for, and your consent for product email. Email addresses given for a free scan are deleted after 12 months.

Your work: the businesses you add (name, address, coordinates), the keywords you scan, scan results and repeat schedules. Results contain the names, positions and ratings of businesses that appear in public Google Maps results. Legal basis: performing our agreement.

Prospect audits, on Agency and Studio only: a customer can store a business it does not own as a prospect record, namely that business's name, address and coordinates, the search term and the scan result, so the customer can show that business how it appears on Google Maps. Only that customer can see the record. If the customer shares the report link, anyone with that link can also see the scan result. We never contact that business. The record is kept for 12 months after the audit and then deleted, together with its scan and any report link. Legal basis: performing our agreement with the customer.

AI checks, on Agency and Studio only: a customer can ask an AI assistant a question about one of its saved businesses. We store the question, the answer, the pages the answer cites, the businesses it names, which assistant and model answered, and when, against that customer's account, so the customer can read the report. Only that customer can see it; there is no share link. The question is sent to DataForSEO, which passes it to the assistant the customer chose; no name, email address or account detail is sent with it. The answer is written by that assistant, not by us. All of it is deleted 12 months after the check. What stays is the billing record: the date, the assistant and one check, without the question or the answer. Separately, a customer can save its own questions for a business: we store the text of each saved question and the language it was written in against that customer's account, and only that customer can see them. Saved questions are kept until the customer deletes the question or the business. Legal basis: performing our agreement with the customer.

Connected AI assistants, on Local, Agency and Studio: when you connect an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT, we send it, each time it asks and only because you connected it, your businesses, keywords, scan results, the names of competing businesses in those results and your AI check results. It can only read. What the assistant's provider keeps is governed by that provider's own terms, not by this notice. We keep each connection (the name the assistant gave, when you connected it, and its tokens in a form that cannot be read back) until you disconnect it, and for at most 90 days from when you approved it; after that the assistant has to be connected again. For each call our servers log which tool was used and whether it worked, never what was asked or answered, for a short period, and we count calls per account to limit abuse. You can disconnect under Settings → Connected assistants and in the assistant itself; changing your password disconnects all of them, and if that fails, you see a message and can disconnect them under Settings. If you are an agency, sending your clients' data to an assistant you connect is your instruction to us under the processing agreement. Legal basis: performing our agreement with you.

Billing: Stripe holds your payment details. We store Stripe's customer and subscription identifiers, your plan, its renewal date and a history of plan changes, and a ledger of the credits you use, get back and buy. Invoices are kept for seven years because Dutch tax law requires it.

Messages you send through the in-app chat, with the page you sent them from, so we can answer and improve the product. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in supporting customers.

Email you receive from us: which of the short series about your first scan we sent you and when, whether you asked for product email, and whether you used an unsubscribe link. Accounts with repeat scans on a paid plan can also get a weekly summary of rank changes; for it we keep a record per week, also for weeks when nothing was sent because nothing changed. You can turn that summary off under Settings → Email or with the unsubscribe link in any message. These records are kept like the rest of your account data. Legal basis: performing our agreement for messages about your own account, and your consent for product email, which you can withdraw at any time under Settings or with the link in any message.

Security: servers log IP addresses and request times for a short period, and we count how often searches and scans are started per account, to detect abuse. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure.

Product analytics with PostHog, to see where people get stuck. For every visitor, PostHog counts page views and clicks without storing anything on your device. To tell visits apart, PostHog's servers make a code from your IP address and browser details; PostHog does not keep your IP address. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in understanding how the website is used. If you accept the analytics cookie, PostHog sets a cookie that links your visits, and inside the app it records sessions in which everything you type, your business details and email addresses are hidden. When you are signed in, your visits are linked to your user id, never to your email address. Legal basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time with the Cookie settings link at the bottom of the website or in the account menu of the app. For every signed-in account, whatever you chose in the banner, our servers send four events: that you signed up, your first completed scan, a completed purchase of a plan or extra credits, and a completed AI check. They carry your user id, never your email address, and no business name, keyword, question or answer. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in knowing whether the product works for the people who use it. You can object by email, and we then stop these events for your account. Shared client reports, free scan results, the links in sign-in emails and the password reset page are never measured. Events are kept for 12 months and recordings for 30 days.

Supabase: database and sign-in, hosted in Ireland (European Union).

Cloudflare: runs this website and its server functions on its global network, at locations close to you or to our database; it processes the requests you make, including your IP address. Where that means a transfer outside the EU, it is covered by Cloudflare's standard contractual clauses.

Stripe: payments and invoices. Stripe may transfer data outside the EU under the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

DataForSEO: ranking data. It receives the keyword and the coordinates of each point to be searched; no name, email address or account detail is sent. For an AI check it receives the question and passes it to the AI assistant the customer chose.

DataForSEO also searches Google Maps when you look up your business by name. It receives the business name you type and the country selected for the search.

Geoapify: address search. It receives the address or place you type when looking up a location by address.

Map tiles: maps are drawn with tiles from the map tile provider (OpenStreetMap unless configured otherwise), whose servers receive your IP address when a map loads.

Resend: sends the email we write to you. It receives your email address and the message. Resend may transfer data outside the EU under the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google, for that sign-in.

Cloudflare Turnstile: if shown on sign-up or login, checks that a person is signing in.

Analytics: a self-hosted Umami instance on Vercel counts page visits without cookies and without storing IP addresses. Shared client reports and free scan results are not measured.

PostHog: product analytics and session recordings, on PostHog's EU servers in Frankfurt (Germany). Requests from your browser reach PostHog through our own domain, without your cookies or sign-in details. It receives the pages you visit, your clicks and your IP address to make the counting code, and only after you accept also the cookie id and the masked recordings of the app.

We do not sell personal data and do not share it with anyone outside this list, unless the law requires us to or you ask us to, for example by connecting an AI assistant to your account.

We set the cookies needed to keep you signed in. The analytics cookie from PostHog is set only after you accept it in the banner; without it we count visits without cookies. If you decline, your browser keeps only that choice, in its local storage, so we do not ask again. You can change your choice at any time with the Cookie settings link at the bottom of the website or in the account menu of the app.

Account data and scans are kept while your account exists and deleted within 30 days after you ask us to close it. You can delete individual scans and businesses yourself at any time. Prospect records are deleted 12 months after their audit, with their scan and report link, and cannot be deleted by hand before then. AI checks are deleted 12 months after the check, with their question, answer and cited pages; the billing record of a check keeps only its date, the assistant and the count. Saved questions are kept until you delete them or their business. Invoice records are kept for seven years. Chat messages are deleted after two years. Abuse counters are deleted after two days. Analytics events in PostHog are deleted after 12 months, and session recordings after 30 days.

You can download a copy of your data at any time from Settings, and change your email address there. You can ask to see, correct or delete your personal data, or object to how we use it, by emailing info@answerground.nl. That includes the analytics events our servers send about your account: after an objection by email we stop them for your user id. We answer within one month. If you think we handle your data wrongly, you can complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens).