Privacy Policy

SearchGrade ("we," "us," or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains what personal data we collect, how we use it, and your choices. In short: we use one essential sign-in cookie and no tracking or advertising cookies, we store your audit history, payments are handled by Stripe, and we never sell your personal information.

Definitions

Personal data

Information that identifies you, such as your name and email address.

Processing

Any operation we perform on your data, such as storing, using, or deleting it.

Cookie

A small file stored in your browser. We use only one essential sign-in cookie.

Audit data

The URLs you submit and the results we save to your report history.

1. Information We Collect

Account information

When you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and profile picture from Google. We store this to identify your account and personalize your experience.

Audit data

We store URLs you audit, your audit results (score, grade, PDF filename), and the date of each audit. This powers your report history in the Dashboard.

Usage data

We may collect standard server logs including IP addresses, browser type, and page requests. This information is used for security, abuse prevention, and service improvement.

Payment information

If you subscribe to a paid plan, your payment is processed by Stripe. We do not store your credit card number or billing details — Stripe handles this securely on our behalf. We receive and store your Stripe customer ID and subscription status.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To provide, operate, and improve the Service
• To save your audit history and generate PDF reports
• To process payments and manage your subscription
• To send transactional emails (e.g., scheduled audit reports, billing receipts) — only when you have opted in to a feature that requires email delivery
• To detect and prevent abuse, fraud, and security incidents
• To comply with legal obligations

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

3. Cookies and Sessions

We use a single, essential session cookie to keep you signed in across page visits. Because it is strictly necessary for authentication, no cookie-consent banner is required. The cookie is sealed (encrypted), stored only in your browser, and is removed when you sign out or when the session expires. We do not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or third-party analytics cookies.

4. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services that may receive limited data:

• Google OAuth — for sign-in authentication. Governed by Google's Privacy Policy.
• Stripe — for payment processing. Governed by Stripe's Privacy Policy.
• Google PageSpeed Insights API — when auditing a URL, we send that URL to the PSI API to retrieve performance metrics. No personal information is transmitted.
• Google Fonts — fonts are loaded from Google's CDN. Google may log the request.

5. Data Retention

We retain your account information and audit history for as long as your account is active. You may delete individual audit reports from your Dashboard at any time. To delete your account entirely, contact us at support@searchgrade.app and we will permanently delete your account and associated data within 30 days.

6. Data Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your data, including encrypted database connections (TLS), session tokens stored securely, and server-side input validation. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a child, contact us immediately.

8. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate information
• Request deletion of your personal information
• Object to or restrict our processing of your data
• Data portability (receive your data in a machine-readable format)

To exercise any of these rights, email us at support@searchgrade.app.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by updating the "Last updated" date above. Continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

10. Contact

For privacy-related questions or requests, contact us at support@searchgrade.app.