The marketing claims an Australian business should take off its pages, and the regulator page that refused our request

The decision in front of you is which claims to remove from your own pages this week, and four types account for most of the risk. This page names those four, quotes the provision headings we were able to read, and then does something unusual for a page on this subject: it tells you which regulator sources refused our request and what that means for anybody researching this question the same way. Nothing here is legal advice, and a specific question about your own wording belongs with an Australian lawyer.

What we could read, and what we could not

Fetched on 22 October 2026, with every request and response recorded.

Source	Result
accc.gov.au false or misleading claims guidance	HTTP 403, a 461 byte Access Denied page carrying an errors.edgesuite.net reference
accc.gov.au advertising and selling guide	HTTP 403, the same 464 byte edge refusal
classic.austlii.edu.au, the consumer law schedule	HTTP 403
adstandards.com.au advertiser code of ethics	HTTP 403, with a body titled Just a moment, which is a browser challenge rather than a refusal
legislation.gov.au, the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 text route	HTTP 200 at 1,358,447 bytes, carrying the arrangement of provisions and no provision text
asic.gov.au banned and disqualified registers	HTTP 200, readable, and quoted below

A 403 under one agent on one date records what a server did on that date rather than a policy, and we are reporting it as a reading. The operational consequence is concrete though: this page quotes no obligation from the Australian Consumer Law, because we did not read the provision text. What we did read is the arrangement of provisions, which is part of the document, and those headings are quotable as headings.

The provision headings, quoted as headings and nothing more

Read from legislation.gov.au on 22 October 2026 from the arrangement of provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 compilation. Its own metadata API gives compilation number 167, register identifier C2026C00405, commencing 16 September 2026, published in four volumes of which volume four is described as Schedules and Endnotes.

• Section 29, headed False or misleading representations about goods or services
• Section 33, headed Misleading conduct as to the nature etc. of goods
• Section 34, headed Misleading conduct as to the nature etc. of services
• Section 35, headed Bait advertising
• Section 47, headed Multiple pricing
• Section 48, headed Single price to be specified in certain circumstances
• Section 49, headed Referral selling
• Section 50, headed Harassment and coercion

Those headings tell a marketer where the subject matter sits without telling them what the law requires, and the difference matters. A heading is a signpost. The obligation is in text we could not open, and an Australian lawyer can open it.

The four claim types to take off your pages

1. A ranking or placement promise. Google's own guidance is worth quoting back at any supplier offering one. In Google's words, no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. A supplier promising that position is making a claim about a system it does not control.
2. A result presented as what will happen. Rewrite it as a dated case with the window and the conditions stated. More honest and more persuasive with the buyers worth having.
3. A superlative with no measurable basis. Best, leading, number one, most trusted. If there is no criterion and no count, it is taste wearing a statistic's clothes. Publish the criterion and the count instead.
4. A price or saving with an unstated basis. Up to figures, was and now prices, and anything where the total a customer pays is assembled from parts. Given that section 48 is headed Single price to be specified in certain circumstances, this is the category where an Australian business should get advice rather than guess.

The free check that does work from here

One Australian verification route answered every request, and it is the one most useful to a buyer. ASIC's Banned and Disqualified search, read on asic.gov.au on 22 October 2026 at HTTP 200. In ASIC's own words it keeps registers of people and organisations that are disqualified or banned from roles in corporations, financial services or the credit industry, and it advises that it is a good idea to check people and organisations before you deal with them. You can search 6 ASIC registers at once using that search, covering people not allowed to be a company director, audit self managed superannuation funds, or work in the Australian financial services or credit industry.

ASIC also keeps a separate court enforceable undertakings register, which it describes as a legal agreement between a person or organisation and ASIC containing one or more commitments, accepted to address breaches of the law, and it states that people who give one will not always appear on the banned and disqualified registers. So a complete check is both searches rather than one.

Why the fetch results are a finding rather than an aside

Because the engines read these hosts and we could not. In our own Australian audit of 64 blind readings taken on 22 October 2026 across ChatGPT and Gemini, with Australia written into the text of every question because the search interface we use accepts a country parameter and ignores it, accc.gov.au appeared in 13 readings and legislation.gov.au in 5, as part of 66 distinct Australian government hosts appearing 139 times across 25 of the 64 readings. So an Australian buyer is being handed guidance from a source a researcher with a browser agent cannot open, and the source whose text route answered with a table of contents.

That asymmetry is worth publishing. It means secondary summaries of the ACCC's guidance circulate widely while the primary page is harder to reach than it looks, which is exactly the condition under which a widely repeated wrong claim about the law survives for years.

Questions about advertising claims in Australia

Why does this page not tell me what the law requires

Because we did not read the provision text, and a page that summarised an obligation it had not opened would be doing the thing this site exists to criticise. The headings are a reading. The requirements are a lawyer's job.

Is a 403 from the ACCC site a block on researchers

It records what that server returned to one agent on one date. We fetched with an ordinary desktop browser agent and received an edge refusal, which is a reading rather than a policy statement, and it repeated across two different ACCC paths in the same session.

What should I do about pricing claims specifically

Get advice, because this is the category where the statute has a provision heading about how a single price is specified. Meanwhile, publish every figure both inclusive and exclusive of GST, which removes the most common ambiguity whatever the rule turns out to require in your case.

Who is responsible if my agency wrote the claim

Settle it in the contract rather than in an argument later. The practical position is that the advertising carries your name, so a named reviewer on your side is cheaper than a dispute.

Where do the advertising codes sit

Separately from the statute, and our page on the codes an Australian ad has to meet and the GST line covers that layer in detail with its own sources.

The asymmetry between what the engines read and what a researcher can open

The most useful thing on this page for anybody researching Australian claims is the gap between those two. The consumer regulator's guidance appeared in 13 of our 64 blind readings on 22 October 2026 and returned HTTP 403 to our own request on two separate paths the same day. The statute register appeared in 5 readings and answered with a table of contents. So an Australian buyer is being handed material from sources a researcher with a browser agent finds harder to reach, which is exactly the condition in which a widely repeated wrong claim about the law survives for years. Read the primary page yourself, in a browser, before trusting anybody's summary of it, this one included. Then replace every claim you removed with the same sentence carrying a number, a sample size and a date, because that construction survives being checked. Ours does and it is unflattering: across those 64 readings our business was named zero times and our domain was cited zero times. AI Knows Us watches a fixed list of buyer questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and the figures it hands an Australian business are ones that can be defended.