SEO results: how we measure and report them
Every figure on this page is from Google Search Console or our own server logs, for a site our team operates or manages, with the period and capture date stated. We do not publish client names, we do not show charts without dates and sources, and we do not promise you the same curve. The rest of this page explains what we measure, how long each kind of work takes to show, and what we will and will not claim.
Yacht Service Network
KaamCam
Spaiking
iaintfluent
Four Cents Media- Yacht Service Network
- KaamCam
- Spaiking
- iaintfluent
- Four Cents Media
Marketplace site
3 months to 3 Sep 2026
Content platform
3 months to 3 Sep 2026
Job and services marketplace
3 months to 7 Sep 2026
Marine services directory
3 months to 7 Sep 2026
Crawler counts from our own nginx logs, last ~2 days, all Four Cents sites, generated 2026-09-09. Fetches show that assistants are reading the pages; they are not visits or leads.
How to read the numbers above
Clicks and impressions are the two numbers Search Console reports without modelling, and click-through rate is their ratio. A high-impression, low-CTR site has a title and rich-result problem, not a ranking problem; that is a different job from a site that has neither impressions nor clicks. Growth inside a quarter on a new site usually reflects indexing and internal-linking work landing first, then content compounding. None of the figures are forecasts for your site: your market, your starting point and your budget decide your curve.
What we measure, from the bottom up
We report the numbers in the order they matter to the business, and we separate leading indicators from results so that early movement is not mistaken for money.
| Measure | Type | Source | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue or booked jobs from search | Result | Your store, CRM or booking system | Whether the work pays |
| Leads from organic and AI referrals | Result | GA4 key events, call tracking | Whether the traffic is the right traffic |
| Organic clicks | Result | Search Console | Visits from Google results |
| AI referral sessions | Result | GA4, by referrer | Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and similar |
| Impressions and average position | Leading | Search Console | Whether Google is showing the pages, and where |
| AI citations on a fixed prompt panel | Leading | Repeated prompt runs | Whether assistants use you as a source, as a sample over time |
| Pages indexed, crawl errors, Core Web Vitals passing | Leading | Search Console, Chrome UX Report | Whether the foundations are in place |
| Rankings for a fixed keyword set | Leading | Rank tracker | Direction of travel, averaged across locations |
Realistic timelines by type of work
Search results move at the speed Google recrawls and re-evaluates pages, which depends on the site's size, authority and how often it changes. These are the ranges we see and plan around; what shortens or lengthens them is noted.
| Work | Typical time to visible effect | What changes it |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing fixes (noindex, canonicals, blocked pages) | Days to a few weeks | How often Google crawls the site; a sitemap ping and URL inspection help |
| Rich results and schema | A few weeks after recrawl | Eligibility rules for the page type; validation errors delay it |
| Title and description rewrites | Two to eight weeks to see CTR change | Google may rewrite titles; impressions must be high enough to measure |
| Google Business Profile fixes | Two to six weeks | Category changes show fastest; reviews and prominence take months |
| New or rebuilt pages on an established site | One to three months to settle; three to six for competitive terms | Site authority, internal links to the new page, how good the competing pages are |
| A new website | Six to twelve months for meaningful traffic | Starting with no links or history; see our guide to the first 90 days |
| Links and digital PR | Months, compounding | Whether there is an asset worth covering; quality of placements |
| AI citations | Weeks to months, and variable | Crawler access, Bing indexing, brand mentions; answers change between runs |
| Recovery from a core update | Often until the next core update | Whether the cause is fixed; see recovering from a core update |
What we will claim, and what we will not
We will show you movement with dates and sources: impressions, clicks, citations, leads and revenue, before and after each change we shipped. We will say which changes we think caused which movement, and we will say when we are not sure. We will report a bad month as a bad month, with a cause where we have one.
We will not promise a ranking, a traffic number or a date. Google states that nobody can guarantee a position, because competitors, algorithms, demand and your own implementation speed all move. We will not show a percentage without the base number, a chart without a period, or a case study without the client's permission, which is why the sites above are labelled rather than named. We will not claim credit for growth that was seasonal or came from paid channels, and we check for both before reporting.
How to check any agency's results, including ours
- Ask for the Search Console export behind the chart, with the property and date range visible.
- Ask whether the site is a paying client, a partner, or one the agency owns. All three can be legitimate; they should be labelled.
- Ask for the dates the changes shipped, and look for the movement after those dates rather than a smooth line from left to right.
- Ask what else happened: a redesign, a press story, a paid campaign, a seasonal peak.
- Ask for a named client only if the agency has permission to name them; the absence of names is not the red flag, the absence of sources is.
Our guide on how to tell if your SEO agency is working goes through this in more detail, and the sample monthly report shows the format we use to report the same things to you.
What these numbers do not show
They do not show a client in your industry, at your size, with your budget, because we do not publish client data. They do not show AI Overview clicks, because Google reports impressions for those surfaces but not clicks. And they do not show what any of these sites would have done without the work, because there is no control site. What they do show is that the methods on this site are the ones we use on properties we are responsible for, measured in the same tools we will give you access to.
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