StreetProof Physical Brand Index™ (PBI)

Press kit

Evidence-firstPrivacy-scrubbedMachine-readable

A city street at night with illuminated storefront signage and a wrapped truck passing by, fictional brands

The story, if you want the short version

A Calgary trades operator built a public evidence index for something the web rarely measures well: brands that are visibly present in the physical world.

StreetProof was founded by the operator of Calgary Garage Door Fix, a trades business that spent years building physical presence the expensive way: a fleet of wrapped trucks on the road six days a week, storefront signage, registered trademarks, 32,000+ completed service calls. None of it registered in the systems that decide who gets found. Google's local rankings and AI assistants read websites and reviews — both faked at industrial scale — while the hardest signal to fake, sustained presence on real streets, produces no data at all. So the founder pointed dashcams at the problem, built a processing pipeline, and started writing accepted physical citations to a public ledger after privacy, identity, and evidence review.

Yes, that means the founder's own company is in the index. We disclose that relationship prominently rather than waiting to be asked: it's a separate entity, scores are cohort-relative and computed mechanically from the ledger, ranking cannot be bought, and the full methodology is public. The founder's business gets exactly what any claimed business gets. The conflict-of-interest story is boring on purpose.

Boilerplate

StreetProof is operated by Street Proof Labs Inc., an Alberta corporation. StreetProof publishes the StreetProof Physical Brand Index™ (PBI), a machine-readable public index of accepted physical brand evidence. Founded in Calgary by the operator of a real trades fleet, it photographs, privacy-scrubs, matches, reviews, and publishes real-world branding — wrapped trucks, storefronts, billboards, venue signs, sponsorships, and other public mentions — as physical citations. These are the offline brand-mention counterpart to backlinks, without pretending an advertisement is an office. Its ledger is append-only and hash-chained, with signed checkpoints and external proof status published publicly. Eligible Presence Records receive PPS and rank inside defined city and industry cohorts. PBI rank measures observed presence, not reviews, quality, endorsement, or membership.

Key numbers (live, public beta)

Physical citations on ledger

18,637

Entities on record

8,786

Brand assets tracked

8,793

Cities with evidence

144

Production data · 18,637 citations · as of Oct 8, 2026, 12:40 a.m. MDT · receipt 38001416

These figures come from the immutable public metric receipt shown above. The index is in public beta. Physical citations exclude synthetic demonstration records; synthetic and non-public ledger rows are reconciled separately on the methodology metrics page. You may republish aggregate figures with attribution (CC BY 4.0).

Why the data holds up in a story

Most local-business statistics are survey estimates or self-reported directory counts. StreetProof publishes reviewed derived citations from privacy-scrubbed evidence. Public records expose the ledger facts and methodology, not raw imagery or private identifiers. The ledger is append-only — legal removals flag a row, they never delete or rewrite one. Ledger inclusion and checkpoint existence can be independently verified. Capture time is supported by device, server, provenance, and review evidence. External checkpoint anchoring began on the published activation date. Checkpoint details are published at /transparency. We also publish our error rates and keep a public corrections log. Quote a StreetProof figure and, if we later revise it, the revision is on the record with a date.

Reporter questions, answered precisely

What does StreetProof observe?

Visible public branding such as storefronts, wrapped vehicles, signs, billboards, venue mentions, and sponsorships.

What does it not prove?

A citation is not proof of legal status, licensing, service quality, ownership of every listed address, or endorsement.

How is privacy handled?

Faces and licence plates are blurred before any image becomes retained evidence, enters the recognition archive, or appears publicly. Unsanitized frames are processed transiently in the private privacy pipeline and are not retained as evidence.

Where do source rights come from?

StreetProof keeps an internal versioned provider-rights register and a jurisdiction control record. Collection and retention fail closed when the required approval is missing.

What does a physical citation prove?

It proves accepted visible brand evidence of the stated presence kind at a time and coarse place. Brand mentions do not imply an office.

How are later recognitions dated?

observed_at keeps the original capture time. accepted_at and published_at show when a later model resolved and admitted the citation.

Working with us

Data desk

We run custom queries on the dataset for journalists' stories — free, 48-hour turnaround. Tell us the angle; we'll tell you what the ledger can and can't support.

Embargoes

Studies are offered under embargo before publication, and we honor exclusives on first publication of major findings. Say “embargo” in the subject line and we'll confirm terms in writing.

Contact

[email protected] for interviews, data requests, and fact-checking. Founder is available for comment on local search, review fraud, and the AI-citation economy.

Methodology · Ledger transparency · Studies. Founder photos, downloadable charts and the embeddable live-globe widget ship with the launch study.