A small research firm with one subject.

Mission

Answer engines now sit between a question and a short list of names, sources, and recommendations. That layer is new enough to attract slogans and old enough to need evidence. Our mission is to make the layer measurable without pretending it is a finished science.

We work on citation behavior, brand mention and recommendation, prompt-panel design, and the way products such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews differ as research objects. We write for operators and researchers who have to defend a method, not only a chart.

The name is literal. A north line is a reference used to keep other measurements honest. The work should point back to a panel, a codebook, and a date.

Independence

Northline is independent. We do not sell rankings, guaranteed mentions, or placement in AI answers. We do not take undisclosed payment to feature a vendor in a landscape or an evaluation.

When a study is commissioned, the commissioner is told what the method can and cannot support before collection begins. When we evaluate a vendor, the evaluation says so. When we cannot measure something, we leave it out rather than fill the gap with a borrowed statistic.

This site does not list clients, awards, headcount, or offices. Those details are easy to invent and hard for a reader to check. The work is the public record: the blog, the methods, and the offer to show our instrument.

How to reach us

Correspondence goes to[email protected]. If you are asking about a study, say what decision the research needs to inform. If you are asking about a methods note, say which brief and what is unclear.