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stated:methodWhat search visibility is actually worth, measured

Findings

Each one states the instrument, the window and the sample size. All are measured on properties we built. Nothing here is estimated, modelled or taken from a third party.

  1. 01

    Ranking better cost us the clicks

    Three query clusters held page one for a full month and returned 0.17 percent between them. Improving their position made the problem worse, not better.

    28 days, 2026-08-13 to 2026-09-09 · 3 clusters over 36 pages, 1,393,285 impressions producing 2,374 clicks

  2. 02

    Seventy seven percent of our impressions could never have become a visit

    Four clusters account for 76.7 percent of everything the site is shown for and convert at 0.177 percent. Everything else converts at 1.413 percent, eight times better, on under a quarter of the impressions.

    28 days, 2026-08-13 to 2026-09-09 · 382 canonical URLs carrying 2,079,623 impressions and 9,661 clicks

  3. 05

    AI assistants sent about one percent of our traffic

    Twenty nine sessions in twenty six days across fifty six posts. Real, spread across more assistants than expected, and far too small to carry a site.

    26 days, 2026-08-16 to 2026-09-10 · 2,728 blog sessions, of which 29 from AI assistants

  4. 06

    A dimension we had never requested was worth 184,133 impressions a month

    Google was auto-translating pages and serving them to readers in other languages, at 184,133 impressions in a month. It sat behind a Search Console dimension that had never once been pulled on this property.

    28 days, 2026-08-13 to 2026-09-09 · 184,133 impressions producing 255 clicks at average position 8.37

  5. 09

    A page with fifty five times fewer impressions produced more clicks

    The largest page on the site drew 466,115 impressions and 618 clicks. A calculator with 8,521 impressions returned 783. Ranking the site by reach and by traffic produces two different lists.

    28 days, 2026-08-13 to 2026-09-09 · 382 canonical URLs carrying 2,079,623 impressions and 9,661 clicks

  6. 10

    The long tail advantage is 2.27x, and narrower inside a position band

    Queries under 100 impressions convert 2.27 times better than queries over 1,000. Compare them inside a single position band and the gap is 1.57x at positions 5 to 8 and 1.23x at 8 to 11. The advantage is real and much smaller than the long tail is usually sold on.

    28 days, 2026-08-13 to 2026-09-09 · 3,328 queries carrying 636,317 impressions and 820 clicks on one cluster