CLU-004 · Clustering and Canonical Ownership

Use result overlap as evidence, not law

• Baseline
• IF
• AND
• THEN
• ELSE

The decision

• IF
  • current top results overlap strongly for two queries
• THEN
  • increase merge confidence but still inspect task and business context
• ELSE
  • do not force a split solely because result overlap is low

Primary metric

cluster validation accuracy

Guardrail

SERP volatility

Reason

Makes the decision explicit, measurable, and reversible where possible.

LAKA levels

• Baseline

Operators

• IF
• AND
• THEN
• ELSE

Governs gates

• distinct task

Source

04-IF-ELSE-AND-OR-RULEBOOK.md — CLU-004 — Use result overlap as evidence, not law

The other eleven rules in Clustering and Canonical Ownership

• CLU-001 One dominant intent, one owner IF a dominant intent cluster is approved Baseline
• CLU-002 Merge same-task candidates IF sense, task, answer structure, result class, and next action are compatible Baseline
• CLU-003 Split different tasks IF queries share vocabulary but require different completion conditions or document forms Baseline
• CLU-005 Detect cannibalization by behavior IF multiple owned URLs receive the same cluster’s impressions with unstable dominance or divided value Baseline
• CLU-006 Merge with migration discipline IF two pages are redundant and one combined page is superior Structural
• CLU-007 Reposition a useful weaker page IF a weaker page has independent value but overlaps the stronger page’s task Major
• CLU-008 Inspect equity before deletion IF a page appears useless or redundant Baseline
• CLU-009 Align canonical signals IF duplicate or parameter URLs must remain accessible Structural
• CLU-010 Protect established URLs IF an older URL has links, traffic, or history and the only proposed improvement is a prettier slug Minor
• CLU-011 Keep lexical variants together IF differences are spelling, word order, pluralization, abbreviation, or stemming without task change Minor
• CLU-012 Test uncertain cluster boundaries IF merge/split evidence is inconclusive Baseline