Insights · Visibility
The DIY Investor-Visibility Audit: Five Places to Check
Published October 18, 2026
Before anyone buys your stock, they check a short list of public records to see whether your story holds up. You can look at the same sources they do. This guide walks through the five an ordinary investor reaches first, in order, and describes what a clean result looks like in each.
Diligence on a small- or micro-cap company starts with what is free and public. An investor rarely calls the company first. They open a regulatory database, read the corporate site, confirm the listing, run a search, and check any technical claims against the filed record. If what they find is stale or does not match the pitch they heard, they move on quietly.
A do-it-yourself visibility audit means viewing your own company through those same records, in the same order, before an investor does. You are not looking for marketing polish. You are looking for gaps and contradictions between your story and the public file. Below are the five places to check and how to read each one.
Place one: your regulatory filing record
This is the foundation. In the United States, investors use EDGAR at the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Canada, they use SEDAR+. Both are free and searchable by company name.
Open your own profile and read it as a stranger would. Confirm your latest annual and interim filings are posted and on time. Read your most recent management discussion and analysis the way a skeptic would, not the way the author did. Check that material information reached the public market broadly rather than through a private channel. Regulation FD, codified at 17 CFR 243, governs selective disclosure by issuers and sets the expectation that material non-public information is disclosed to everyone at once.
If an investor finds your filing record thin, out of date, or hard to reconcile with your website, the audit ends here for most of them.
Where to start
- United States: EDGAR full-text and filing search.
- Canada: SEDAR+.
Place two: your investor relations page
After the filing record, investors read your own site. The job of your investor relations page is to mirror the filed record and make it easy to navigate. It should not say more than the file supports.
Read every forward-looking claim on the page and ask whether a filed document backs it. Watch for resource or production language that is stronger on the website than in your filings. If your company has ever used paid promotion, confirm the disclosure of who paid and how much is clear, because Section 17(b) of the Securities Act of 1933 requires anyone who touts a security for consideration to disclose that fact and the amount.
A clean investor relations page points back to the primary record rather than replacing it. Links to your EDGAR or SEDAR+ profile, a current fact sheet that matches your last filing, and plain contact information are the basics.
Place three: the exchange or market tier
Investors confirm where you trade and under what conditions. The listing venue carries its own public profile, and that profile sometimes shows designations an issuer would rather explain in its own words.
Check your own listing page on the relevant venue. For TSX Venture Exchange issuers, start at tsx.com. For Canadian Securities Exchange issuers, use thecse.com. For companies quoted in the United States over the counter, OTC Markets shows the tier and any caution flag assigned to the security. Confirm the data shown about your company is correct and current.
Place four: search results and news
Now investors run the obvious search: your company name and ticker. What comes back is your visibility, whether you shaped it or not.
Run the same search yourself. The first page should be dominated by your own filings and your own site, not by stale third-party pages or promotional articles you did not authorize. If paid coverage appears, revisit the touting-disclosure requirement under Section 17(b) noted above. The goal is simple. An investor should be able to find your primary record quickly and should not have to wade through material you cannot stand behind.
Place five: the sector-specific technical record
Resource issuers face an extra layer, and investors who follow the sector know to check it. Technical claims about mineral projects must rest on a filed technical report prepared to a recognized standard.
In Canada, National Instrument 43-101 governs the disclosure of scientific and technical information about mineral projects and requires that disclosure be based on a report signed by a qualified person. In the United States, Regulation S-K Subpart 1300 sets the mining property disclosure requirements for SEC reporting companies. Confirm that any resource or reserve figure on your website or in your deck traces to a report filed under the standard that applies to you. If a number on the slide is not in the filed report, an informed investor will notice.
A side-by-side view
| Place investors look | Primary source to open | What a clean result looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Regulatory filing record | EDGAR or SEDAR+ | Current filings, on time, consistent with your messaging |
| Investor relations page | Your own site | Mirrors the filed record, no claims the file does not support |
| Exchange or market tier | tsx.com, thecse.com, or otcmarkets.com | Correct listing data, any designation already explained by you |
| Search results | A plain name-and-ticker search | Your filings and site rank first, no unauthorized promotion |
| Technical record | NI 43-101 or S-K 1300 report on file | Every technical figure traces to the filed report |
Your audit checklist
- Open your EDGAR or SEDAR+ profile and confirm your last annual and interim filings are posted and current.
- Read your most recent MD&A as a skeptic, not as its author.
- Compare every forward-looking claim on your website against a filed document.
- Confirm any paid promotion carries the disclosure that Section 17(b) requires.
- Check your listing page for correct data and any designation you have not addressed.
- Run your name and ticker through a search engine and review the first page.
- If you are a resource issuer, trace every technical figure to a filed NI 43-101 or S-K 1300 report.
- Write down each gap you found and the filing or page that would close it.
Where a firm fits
You can run this audit yourself with nothing but a browser, and most issuers should at least once a quarter. Where an outside investor relations firm helps is in the follow-through: turning the gaps you found into disclosure that is accurate, consistent across every public source, and tied back to the filed record. FoundryIR works with small- and micro-cap issuers in Canada and the United States on that kind of alignment, including standalone press-release writing and distribution on the North American circuit for US$799 per release of up to 400 words. The audit above is yours to run without any of that.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
How often should I run a visibility self-audit?
At least once each quarter, and again whenever you file a material document or update your website. Investors check these sources continuously, so your audit should keep pace with your filings rather than lag behind them.
What is the single most common gap this audit finds?
A claim on the corporate website or investor deck that the filed record does not support. The fix is to bring the website in line with the filing, not to strengthen the filing to match the website. For technical figures, that means tracing each one to a report filed under NI 43-101 or Regulation S-K Subpart 1300.
Do I need a paid tool to check my own filings?
No. EDGAR on sec.gov and SEDAR+ at sedarplus.ca are free and searchable by company name, and your exchange or OTC Markets listing page is public. The audit costs only your time.
See how visible your company is to investors right now
The Investor Visibility Analysis scores your public footprint out of 10, shows the gap to the issuers we have analyzed with the same method, and ranks the moves by market-value leverage. It arrives as a short email plus your own report page, free, whether or not we ever work together.
Educational content, not investment, legal, or disclosure advice. Rules and exchange policies change; verify against the primary source linked above and consult your securities counsel on disclosure decisions.