# Terms of Service

Last Updated: February 26, 2026

## 1. Introduction and Acceptance

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of RankWiz AI, including its website, web application, API, and WordPress plugin (collectively, the "Service"). By creating an account, accessing, or using RankWiz AI, you accept these Terms. If you do not agree to all provisions, do not use the Service.

RankWiz AI ("we," "us," "our," or "Company") is a SEO diagnostic and content optimization platform that:
- Connects to Google Search Console to analyze search performance
- Integrates with WordPress sites to manage content inventory
- Generates SEO recommendations using industry-standard analysis
- Uses artificial intelligence (powered by user-supplied OpenAI API keys) to produce content rewrite drafts
- Enables publishing of AI-generated and edited content to WordPress via plugin

## 2. Service Description and Acceptable Use

### 2.1 What RankWiz AI Does

RankWiz AI is a tool for SEO analysis and content optimization. The Service:
- Analyzes Google Search Console data (impressions, clicks, rankings, CTR) for your connected sites
- Monitors WordPress content inventory and traffic patterns
- Generates SEO recommendations based on statistical analysis
- Creates AI-generated content drafts when you provide an OpenAI API key
- Facilitates publishing edited content to your WordPress site via HMAC-authenticated plugin

RankWiz AI is a *tool*, not a guarantee of SEO success. Results depend on content quality, market conditions, competition, user implementation, and numerous other factors outside our control.

### 2.2 What You Acknowledge

By using RankWiz AI, you acknowledge:

- **You own your WordPress sites**: You are the authorized owner or administrator of every WordPress site connected to RankWiz AI. You authorize us to read content and publish changes via the WordPress REST API using the credentials you provide.

- **You own your Google Search Console property**: You authorize us to access GSC data for properties you have verified and authorized via OAuth.

- **You own your OpenAI API key**: If you provide an OpenAI API key, you own it, you are responsible for its usage and costs, and you comply with OpenAI's Terms of Service. We act as your agent to send content to OpenAI for processing. **You are solely responsible for all charges incurred by your OpenAI account.**

- **You review content before publishing**: Any AI-generated content is a draft only. You must review, edit, and approve all content before publishing to your live WordPress site. You are solely responsible for the accuracy, legality, and SEO impact of published content.

- **You grant copyright and publication rights**: You confirm you have the right to publish all content to your WordPress site and that published content does not infringe third-party intellectual property.

### 2.3 Prohibited Uses

You may not use RankWiz AI to:

- Generate or publish spam, low-quality, or thin content intended to manipulate search rankings
- Engage in keyword stuffing, cloaking, doorway pages, or other deceptive SEO practices
- Automatically publish large volumes of content without human review
- Bypass content moderation, plagiarism detection, or quality controls
- Generate content designed to deceive users about authorship, origin, or factual accuracy
- Generate defamatory, harassing, hateful, or illegal content
- Violate OpenAI's usage policies or any third-party API terms
- Reproduce copyrighted content or facilitate plagiarism
- Use the Service for competitor intelligence collection or unauthorized data scraping
- Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the algorithms or models underlying the Service
- Share your account credentials with other users; accounts are per-user and non-transferable
- Use the Service on behalf of another business without written consent

Violation of these prohibitions may result in suspension or termination of your account without refund.

## 3. Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) — OpenAI API Key Responsibility

### 3.1 You Control Your API Key

RankWiz AI does not provide OpenAI API access. Instead, you provide your own OpenAI API key. This model means:

- **You are responsible for all OpenAI charges**: Any content generated through RankWiz AI consumes tokens on your OpenAI account. You pay OpenAI directly for token usage. We do not bill you for OpenAI costs.

- **You control usage limits**: Set rate limits and spend limits on your OpenAI account dashboard to prevent unexpected charges.

- **You comply with OpenAI's ToS**: By providing your API key, you confirm you have a valid OpenAI account, you comply with OpenAI's usage policies, and you indemnify us against claims arising from your OpenAI account usage.

- **We encrypt your key**: Your OpenAI API key is encrypted at rest using AES-256-CBC encryption (Laravel's encrypted cast) and is never logged, transmitted unencrypted, or shared with third parties.

- **We validate your key periodically**: We may ping your OpenAI account to verify your API key remains valid. If your key becomes invalid (expired, revoked, or rate-limited), we will notify you and suspend content generation until you provide a valid key.

### 3.2 Key Compromise

If your OpenAI API key is compromised, stolen, or exposed:
1. Immediately revoke the key in your OpenAI account dashboard
2. Notify us at support@rankwiz.ai
3. Generate a new API key and update it in RankWiz AI settings
4. Contact OpenAI support to monitor for unauthorized usage

**We are not liable for charges incurred due to a compromised API key that you do not promptly revoke.**

## 4. Content Liability and AI-Generated Content

### 4.1 You are Responsible for Content

RankWiz AI provides AI-generated content drafts as suggestions only. **You are solely responsible** for:

- **Reviewing all AI-generated content** before publishing to your site
- **Editing and fact-checking** generated content for accuracy
- **Verifying copyright compliance**: AI models are trained on internet data; generated content may inadvertently resemble or reproduce existing work. You must verify originality before publishing.
- **Compliance with law**: Generated content must not violate laws, regulations, industry standards, or platform policies.
- **SEO and search ranking impact**: Generated content may or may not improve search visibility. Search ranking results depend on competition, user behavior, site authority, and factors outside our control.
- **Plagiarism**: We do not run plagiarism detection. Use third-party tools (Copyscape, Turnitin, etc.) to verify originality if needed.

### 4.2 We Are Not Liable

RankWiz AI shall not be liable for:

- **AI-generated content accuracy**: We do not guarantee AI-generated content is factually accurate, well-written, or suitable for publication. AI can hallucinate, omit context, or produce misleading statements.
- **Plagiarism or copyright infringement**: If published content is found to be plagiarized or infringe third-party copyrights, **you are solely liable**. You must indemnify us.
- **Search ranking impact**: We do not guarantee generated content will improve rankings, increase traffic, or achieve any business outcome.
- **Harm caused by published content**: If a reader is harmed (personally, financially, or reputationally) by content you published, you are liable. We are not.
- **Legal compliance**: You are responsible for ensuring published content complies with all applicable laws, regulations, and platform policies.

### 4.3 Your Indemnification

You indemnify and hold harmless RankWiz AI from any claims, damages, or costs (including legal fees) arising from:
- Content you generate, edit, or publish using the Service
- Breach of these Terms or any third-party's intellectual property, privacy, or other rights
- Your violation of applicable law
- Your use of OpenAI's services via RankWiz AI

## 5. WordPress Content Publishing

### 5.1 How Publishing Works

When you authorize RankWiz AI to connect to your WordPress site:
1. You provide an HMAC-authenticated plugin installed on your WordPress instance
2. RankWiz AI authenticates to your site using a shared secret (HMAC-SHA256)
3. The plugin reads your content inventory and WordPress data
4. When you publish a draft, we send the content via WordPress REST API and create/update a post

### 5.2 You Control Authorization

- You can revoke RankWiz AI's access to your WordPress site at any time by deactivating the plugin or revoking the shared secret in your RankWiz AI settings.
- You can manually revert, delete, or edit any content published via RankWiz AI in your WordPress admin panel.
- You retain full administrative control of your WordPress site and content at all times.

### 5.3 Publishing Risk

- **Content goes live immediately**: When you click "publish," content is immediately posted to your live WordPress site. Use drafts or staging to preview before publishing.
- **Version history**: RankWiz AI maintains a snapshot of content published via the plugin; you can restore previous versions within the Service, but the authoritative version is in WordPress.
- **Conflicts and overrides**: If you edit content in WordPress admin while RankWiz AI is processing a draft, your changes may be overwritten. Do not edit content in WordPress that you are simultaneously editing in RankWiz AI.

### 5.4 We Don't Monitor Your Site

RankWiz AI does not:
- Monitor whether published content is live, indexed, or ranking
- Review published content for compliance with your site's editorial standards
- Notify you if search engines penalize your site for low-quality content
- Provide support for WordPress errors, plugins, or hosting infrastructure

## 6. Data Handling, Encryption, and Retention

### 6.1 What Data We Collect

RankWiz AI collects and stores:

- **Account information**: Name, email address, password hash, subscription status
- **Site metadata**: Domain name, WordPress site URL, site name
- **Google Search Console data**: Impressions, clicks, click-through rate, average position, device/country segments (synced from GSC API)
- **WordPress content inventory**: Post titles, URLs, content, publish dates, author metadata
- **Authentication secrets**:
  - GSC OAuth tokens (access and refresh tokens) — encrypted at rest
  - WordPress HMAC shared secret — encrypted at rest
  - OpenAI API key — encrypted at rest
- **Audit logs**: User actions (login, site connection, analysis runs, content published), IP addresses, timestamps
- **Analysis outputs**: Analysis runs, findings, recommendations, AI generation jobs, generated content drafts

### 6.2 Encryption at Rest

All sensitive credentials are encrypted at rest using AES-256-CBC encryption (Laravel's `encrypted` cast):
- Google OAuth tokens
- WordPress HMAC secrets
- OpenAI API keys
- Audit log IP addresses (if encrypted per configuration)

### 6.3 Data Retention Periods

| Data Type | Retention Period | Notes |
|-----------|-----------------|-------|
| Google Search Console metrics | Configurable (default: 90 days) | Rolling retention; older data automatically deleted |
| WordPress content snapshots | For life of site | Unless manually deleted by user |
| Analysis runs and findings | For life of site | Unless manually deleted by user |
| AI-generated drafts | For life of site | User can delete individual drafts |
| Audit logs | Daily automated pruning | Audit log retention configurable per config; typically 30–90 days |
| Soft-deleted sites and associated data | 30 days | After account termination or manual site deletion, data marked as soft-deleted for 30 days, then permanently purged |

Users can request data deletion at any time (see Section 9: Data Subject Requests).

### 6.4 Data Sharing with Third Parties

RankWiz AI shares your data with:

- **Google**: When syncing GSC data, we call Google's Search Console API using your OAuth token. Google receives your query to their API and returns search metrics.
- **OpenAI**: When you request AI-generated content, we send the following to OpenAI's API:
  - The page content (or text you provide)
  - SEO metadata (target keywords, intent)
  - Your custom instructions (if any)
  - Your OpenAI API key authenticates the request; **we do not send your key to OpenAI as a request parameter** (OpenAI authenticates via HTTP Authorization header)
- **WordPress**: When you publish content, we send the post/page content to your WordPress site via REST API.
- **Stripe** (if billing feature enabled): When processing payment, billing information is shared with Stripe pursuant to their privacy policy and PCI DSS standards.
- **Hosting provider**: All data is stored on our hosting infrastructure (e.g., AWS); your data is processed by our provider pursuant to a data processing agreement.

We do not sell your personal data or share it with advertisers.

## 7. Limitation of Liability

### 7.1 Disclaimer of Warranties

RankWiz AI is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, express or implied. We disclaim:

- Merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, or non-infringement
- That the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure
- That content generated by AI will be accurate, original, or suitable for publication
- That SEO recommendations will improve search rankings or traffic
- That the Service will integrate seamlessly with Google, OpenAI, WordPress, or other third-party services

Use of the Service is at your sole risk.

### 7.2 Liability Caps

**To the maximum extent permitted by law:**

- **Total Liability**: Our total liability under these Terms is capped at the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim (or $100 if you did not pay).

- **Excluded Damages**: In no event shall we be liable for:
  - Indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages
  - Lost profits, revenue, data, or business opportunity
  - Damage to reputation or business interruption
  - Even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages

- **Exceptions**: These limitations do not apply to:
  - Personal injury or death
  - Fraud or gross negligence
  - Liability that cannot be limited by law
  - Infringement of your intellectual property (we defend against claims that RankWiz AI itself infringes your IP; you defend claims arising from *your* content)

## 8. Service Availability and Support

### 8.1 No Uptime SLA

RankWiz AI does not guarantee any uptime percentage (SLA). The Service is provided on a best-effort basis. We may experience:
- Scheduled maintenance (typically nights/weekends; we aim for 24-hour notice)
- Unscheduled outages due to infrastructure, third-party API issues, or other events
- Performance degradation during high-demand periods
- Rate-limiting of your API calls if you exceed fair-use thresholds

### 8.2 Third-Party Dependencies

RankWiz AI depends on:
- Google Search Console API
- OpenAI API
- WordPress REST API
- DNS, hosting providers, and internet infrastructure

Failures or changes by these third parties may impact our Service. We are not liable for third-party downtime.

### 8.3 Support

We provide support via email at support@rankwiz.ai. Response times are best-effort and not guaranteed. We do not provide phone support for general issues.

## 9. Account Termination

### 9.1 Termination by You

You may terminate your account at any time by:
1. Logging into your account settings
2. Selecting "Delete Account" or "Cancel Subscription"
3. Confirming the termination

Termination is effective immediately. All subscription charges cease. We do not issue refunds for partially used billing periods.

### 9.2 Termination by Us

We may suspend or terminate your account if:
- You violate these Terms (particularly Sections 2.3 or 3.1)
- Your account is inactive for 12 consecutive months
- You fail to pay subscription fees within 30 days of the due date
- Legal obligations or regulatory requirements mandate termination
- We cease offering the Service

We will attempt to provide written notice before termination, except in cases of emergency (e.g., abuse, illegal activity).

### 9.3 What Happens to Your Data Upon Termination

Upon termination:
1. Your account is marked as soft-deleted (inactive but recoverable)
2. You lose access to the Service
3. Data associated with your account remains in our database for 30 days
4. After 30 days, all data is permanently purged (with the exception of legally required retention, such as audit logs or transaction records)
5. You do not receive a backup; if you need data, request it before termination

**Before terminating, download or export any data you need to retain.**

If you believe our termination was unjust, you may contact us at support@rankwiz.ai, but we retain the right to make final termination decisions.

## 10. Intellectual Property

### 10.1 Our IP

RankWiz AI owns or licenses:
- The software, algorithms, user interface, and documentation of the Service
- Trademarks, logos, and brand materials
- Recommendations, findings, and analysis outputs generated by our algorithms

You may not reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract these.

### 10.2 Your IP

You retain ownership of:
- Content you create or upload (WordPress posts, custom instructions, etc.)
- Data you provide (site domains, email addresses, etc.)
- Published content on your WordPress site

### 10.3 License Grant

By using RankWiz AI, you grant us:
- A limited, non-exclusive license to store, process, and display your data for providing the Service
- Rights to use anonymized, aggregated data (e.g., industry benchmarks) for service improvement and analytics
- Rights to disclose data if legally required (subpoena, law enforcement request)

## 11. Modification of Terms and Service

### 11.1 Changes to Terms

We may modify these Terms at any time. Changes take effect 30 days after posting. If you do not accept modified Terms, your remedy is to terminate your account before the effective date.

Material changes (e.g., increased pricing, new prohibited uses) will be communicated via email to your registered address.

### 11.2 Changes to Service

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features of the Service at any time without liability. If we discontinue a major feature that materially limits the Service's core functionality, we will offer a pro-rata refund for the current billing period.

## 12. Indemnification

You indemnify and hold harmless RankWiz AI, its owners, employees, and agents from:
- Claims by third parties (users, competitors, search engines, copyright holders, etc.) arising from your use of the Service
- Content you generate, publish, or distribute
- Your violation of these Terms or applicable law
- Your violation of third-party rights (IP, privacy, publicity, defamation)
- Your breach of representations or warranties made herein

## 13. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

### 13.1 Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of [YOUR STATE/JURISDICTION], without regard to conflict of law principles.

### 13.2 Dispute Resolution

Before pursuing litigation:
1. **Notice**: Provide written notice of the dispute to support@rankwiz.ai with details of the claim
2. **Negotiation**: We will attempt to resolve the claim within 30 days of receiving notice
3. **Escalation**: If unresolved, either party may initiate arbitration or litigation as permitted by law

Disputes shall be resolved by binding arbitration under [ARBITRATION RULES] in [JURISDICTION], except:
- Claims for infringement of intellectual property may be brought in court
- You may bring claims in small claims court if the amount is below that court's jurisdiction
- We may seek injunctive relief to prevent misuse of the Service

### 13.3 Class Action Waiver

Both parties waive the right to participate in class action lawsuits or class-wide arbitrations. Disputes shall be resolved individually.

## 14. Severability and Entire Agreement

### 14.1 Severability

If any provision is found invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect.

### 14.2 Entire Agreement

These Terms, along with any referenced policies (Privacy Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Data Processing Agreement), constitute the entire agreement between you and RankWiz AI regarding the Service. They supersede prior agreements, understandings, and negotiations.

## 15. Contact Information

For questions regarding these Terms, contact:

**RankWiz AI Legal Team**
Email: legal@rankwiz.ai
Support: support@rankwiz.ai

---

**Version 1.0** | Effective Date: [DATE TO BE SET]