What is proprietary data?
Proprietary data is information only one business holds, drawn from its own customers, jobs, sales or research, such as repair times from its job records. Published with its method, it gives other sites and AI answers a fact they can only get from that business.
Cited from the66th.com/glossary/proprietary-data
How proprietary data works
A business records numbers every day: how long jobs take, what customers ask, what breaks most often. Turned into a short report with the method stated, those numbers become facts no other site can publish first. A writer or an AI tool that wants the figure has one place to find it.
The method matters as much as the figure: how many records, from when to when, and what was left out. A number without its method is hard to trust and hard to cite.
| Raw records | Published figure |
|---|---|
| 1,240 furnace repair jobs, January 2025 to June 2026 | Median time from first call to finished repair: 26 hours |
| Technician notes from the same jobs | Share of no-heat calls caused by a failed igniter: 31% |
Why Google and AI tools care
Google's guidance on helpful, reliable, people-first content asks whether content provides original information, reporting, research or analysis, and defines originality as information or perspectives that are not already available on other websites.
Google's guide to generative AI search tells site owners not to recycle what others have already said or what a generative AI model could easily produce, and to bring their own in-depth experience instead. Data from the business's own work is that experience in numbers.
What it means for your business
A service business with a few years of invoices, bookings or support tickets already holds data it can publish. It matters most in crowded categories, where competitors' pages repeat each other: one original figure gives a journalist, a buyer or an AI answer a reason to name the business.
It matters less when the sample is too small to mean anything, because ten jobs do not make a trend. Original data is one of the page types our SEO copywriting work plans for each service.
Common mistakes
- Publishing a figure without the method. State the sample size, the dates and what was excluded, so a reader can trust it and a writer can cite it.
- Calling a survey of a handful of customers a study. Publish the count and let the reader judge what it supports.
- Putting the data only in a PDF or an image. Put the key figures in the page's text and in a table, so people and search tools can read and quote them.
- Publishing anything that identifies a customer. Share totals and rates only.
Related terms
Sources: Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content, 5 October 2026; Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, 10 July 2026.