Advertising a result or a guarantee in Australia, and the provision headings that make the word a loaded one

An Australian business can advertise a result, and the decision is what to put behind it before it runs. Four conditions make a performance claim defensible: the result happened and is documented, the conditions it happened under are on the same page as the claim, the time window is named, and the claim describes the past rather than promising the reader's future. A claim meeting all four is a case study. A claim meeting none is an exposure.

There is a second thing worth knowing in Australia specifically, which is that the word guarantee already has a statutory meaning here attached to consumer rights, so using it loosely in marketing copy invites a reader to hear something you did not intend. Nothing on this page is legal advice and that question belongs with an Australian lawyer.

The four conditions, as a checklist

1. It happened and you can produce the evidence. An export, a dated report, a signed reference. A memory of a good quarter is not evidence and the claim is not available to you.
2. The conditions sit on the same page as the claim. Budget, starting position, sector, how long it took. A result without its conditions invites the reader to assume their own, which is where the complaint comes from.
3. The window is named, with both dates. From this date to that date. Not recently, not within a few months.
4. It describes the past. This client's enquiries moved from this to that between these dates is a fact. A promise about the reader's own future is a different kind of sentence and it is the one to avoid.

Why the word guarantee is loaded here

Read from legislation.gov.au on 22 October 2026, the arrangement of provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 compilation includes a run of provisions whose headings use that word in a consumer rights sense. Section 60 is headed Guarantee as to due care and skill. Section 61 is headed Guarantees as to fitness for a particular purpose etc. Section 62 is headed Guarantee as to reasonable time for supply. Section 64 is headed Guarantees not to be excluded etc. by contract. Section 29 is headed False or misleading representations about goods or services.

We read those as headings in the arrangement of provisions. We did not read the provision text, because the text route at legislation.gov.au returned HTTP 200 at 1,358,447 bytes carrying only the table of contents, and the ACCC's own guidance pages returned HTTP 403 to our request on the same day. So this page states no obligation and no threshold. What it gives a marketer is the practical consequence: in a country where statute uses guarantee for consumer rights that cannot be excluded by contract, writing our guarantee into an advert as a marketing flourish is a sentence worth running past a lawyer rather than a copywriter.

The promise to refuse, including when a supplier offers it to you

A number one ranking promise. Google's own guidance says it plainly and it is worth quoting across the table: in Google's words, no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. Any agency offering that position is making a claim about a system it does not control, and a buyer who accepts it has accepted a claim they will later have to defend to their own customers.

The same logic applies to certainty about an AI assistant's answer. These are retrieval systems that change. In our own Australian readings on 22 October 2026 the same category of question produced a named supplier 36 times out of 64 and no supplier at all 28 times out of 64, which is a useful illustration of why certainty about a machine answer is not a claim anybody can back.

A refund promise is a different instrument

A refund term is not a performance claim. It is a commercial term and it is defensible precisely because it is within your control. If you will refund, say in what circumstances, by when, and what the customer has to do to claim it. The failure mode is not the promise. It is a promise whose conditions only appear when somebody tries to use it.

So the split is simple. Commit to the things you control, which are the process, the deliverables, the dates and the refund. Report the things you do not control, which are outcomes, with their dates and conditions attached.

What to write instead of the claim you wanted

The claim you wanted	The defensible version
We will double your leads	One client's enquiries moved from 14 a month to 31 a month between March and September 2026 on a $6,000 monthly budget in the same sector
A number one ranking, offered as a certainty	We publish the pages, report position and impressions monthly from Search Console, and the first review is at 90 days
Australia's leading agency	Named in 12 of 64 blind AI readings taken for Australia on one date, which is a visibility count and not a quality verdict
Risk free	Cancel with 30 days notice at any point after month three, and every account stays in your name

The right hand column is longer and converts better with serious buyers, because every line in it is something a reader can check.

Questions about performance claims in Australia

Can I use a client result without naming the client

Yes, and it is common. Keep the sector, the budget band, the window and the starting position, because an unattributed result with its conditions is credible and one without them is not.

Does a disclaimer fix an overstated claim

Not where the disclaimer contradicts the headline. The test to apply is whether the claim and its condition sit in the same place the reader will actually read.

What about a result from another market

Say which market. A figure from another country presented without its geography invites an Australian reader to apply it here, and this market's costs and volumes are its own.

Does a process commitment help win business

More than an outcome promise does. A notice period, named deliverables and a refund term answer the buyer's real fear, which is being locked into something that is not working.

How do I check a supplier before taking their word on anything

ASIC's Banned and Disqualified search is free and, in ASIC's own words read on 22 October 2026, it keeps registers of people and organisations disqualified or banned from roles in corporations, financial services or the credit industry and advises that it is a good idea to check people and organisations before you deal with them. Also search its separate court enforceable undertakings register, because ASIC states that people who give one will not always appear on the banned and disqualified registers.

What we read, what we could not, and the claim we make anyway

This page quotes provision headings and no obligations, because the obligations are in text we could not open. Fetched on 22 October 2026, the statute text route at legislation.gov.au returned HTTP 200 at 1,358,447 bytes carrying the arrangement of provisions and nothing else, and its own metadata API describes the compilation as number 167, register identifier C2026C00405, commencing 16 September 2026 and published in four volumes of which volume four is Schedules and Endnotes. The consumer regulator's two guidance pages returned HTTP 403 to the same request. That is a reading of what those servers did on that date rather than a statement of policy, and the honest consequence is that a marketer researching this from a terminal gets headings and a lawyer gets the text. Against that, here is a claim we will make with its conditions attached: across 64 blind Australian readings on 22 October 2026, on ChatGPT and Gemini, with the market written into every question because the interface ignores its own country parameter, our business was named zero times and our domain was cited zero times. Denominator, date, engines, method, and a result that does us no favours. AI Knows Us produces that file for an Australian business across five surfaces.