Results · May to October 2026
What our sites did in Google and AI search.
The short answer
On the same 16 sites we run, Google clicks rose 221% between May and October 2026, from 935 to 3,004 a month, and Google views rose 349%. Over the same months, AI assistants opened pages on our sites 28,733 times to answer someone. Below are those figures, our strongest single-site results, and how we measured each one.
On the same 16 sites we run, Google clicks rose 221% between May and October 2026, from 935 to 3,004 a month, against an industry that's flat or down: SEOcrawl found Google clicks down 15% year on year across 16,661 sites, and Graphite found US organic search traffic down 2.5%.
By Mahmoud Halat, Founder & Principal ·
Every site we run.
Start here. These figures take in every site we run, and the growth rows every site that had data for the whole period, so they are the fair measure.
| What | Result | When | Measured with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google clicks, the same 16 sites | +221%, from 935 to 3,004 a month | May vs October 2026 | Search Console, the 16 sites that already had search data in May |
| Google views (impressions), the same 16 sites | +349%, from 94,574 to 424,180 a month | May vs October 2026 | Search Console, the same 16 sites |
| Google views and clicks, every site we run | 1,272,597 views and 9,247 clicks | May to October 2026 | Search Console, every site connected to it |
| Pages opened by AI assistants | 28,733 (best month: 6,145, June 2026) | May to October 2026 | Edge logs: ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User and Meta AI fetching a page to answer someone |
| Share of visits from AI assistants, every site we run | 1.2% | October 2026 | Cite-Met visit tracking, against Conductor's 1.08% benchmark |
Our best results.
These rows are selected: the single sites that did best over the same months. Sites that did worse are left out of this table.
| What | Result | When | Measured with |
|---|---|---|---|
| A contractor's site: Google clicks | +186%, from 49 to 140 a month | May vs October 2026 | Search Console |
| A contractor's site: click rate | 3.55%, against Databox's 0.91% median | May to October 2026 | Search Console clicks divided by views |
| A home builder's site: Google views | 12x, from 156 to 1,916 a month | May vs October 2026 | Search Console |
| A home builder's site: visits from AI assistants | 6.2% (24 of 388), against Conductor's 1.08% | 7 August to 31 October 2026 | Cite-Met visit tracking |
| A home cinema retailer's site: visits from AI assistants | 3.2% (58 of 1,825), against Conductor's 1.08% | 7 August to 31 October 2026 | Cite-Met visit tracking |
| A home cinema retailer's site: click rate | 1.07%, against Databox's 0.91% median | June to October 2026 | Search Console clicks divided by views |
| Our own travel site: Google clicks | 6.3x, from 373 to 2,368 a month; average position 8.7 to 7.7 | May vs October 2026 | Search Console |
The sites themselves
| What | Result | When | Measured with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest site we've built | 10,249 pages, made from templates | Live sitemap, 2 November 2026 | Count of URLs in the site's sitemap |
| Largest site we've built by hand | 549 pages | Live sitemap, 2 November 2026 | Count of URLs in the site's sitemap |
| Mobile speed, a client site | 92 performance, 100 accessibility, 100 best practices | 2 November 2026 | Google Lighthouse mobile, a client site, median of 3 runs. Scores move from run to run. |
What the industry measured.
These studies compare a year with the year before, while our figures compare May with October, so read them as context for ours.
| Benchmark | Figure | Sample | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google organic clicks, year on year | -15%; the median site -20.1%; 69% of sites down | 16,661 sites' Search Console data, September 2025 to August 2026 against the year before. The sites are SEOcrawl customers who opted in. | SEOcrawl, AI Traffic vs. Google Organic in 2026 (23 Oct 2026) |
| US organic search traffic, year on year | -2.5% | The 40,000 largest US sites, Similarweb data, January to November 2025 against February to December 2024. Graphite sells SEO services and says so on its page. | Graphite, Debunking The Myth That Search Is Dying (15 Jan 2026) |
| Search Console click rate | Median 0.91%; top quarter 1.79% | 4,800+ companies. | Databox, CTR Benchmarks (updated 2 Nov 2026) |
| Organic click rate with an AI Overview on the page | 2.4%, against 3.8% without one | 53 brands, 2.43 billion impressions, February 2026. | Seer Interactive, AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update (24 Apr 2026) |
| AI referrals as a share of website traffic | 1.08%; 87.4% of it from ChatGPT | 1,215 US enterprise domains, May to September 2025. The domains are Conductor's enterprise customers. | Conductor, 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report (updated 6 Jul 2026) |
How we measured.
- Which sites
- The sites we build, host and run, client sites and our own. The same-sites figures cover the 16 sites that already had Search Console data in May 2026, so a site that launched later can't inflate the growth. We kept adding pages to these sites over the period, which is part of why the numbers rose.
- Google clicks and views
- From Google Search Console, May to October 2026. Growth compares the month of May with the month of October. A view is Search Console's impression: the site appeared in a result someone saw. The click rate is clicks divided by views.
- AI page opens
- From the edge logs of the sites we host, May to October 2026: requests from ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User and Meta AI, the fetchers these assistants send to open a page while answering someone. They are not visits, and they are not citations: the logs show a page was opened, not what the answer said.
- Visits from AI assistants
- From Cite-Met Pulse, the visit tracking on the sites we host: a visit from an AI assistant is one that arrived from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or another assistant. We quote these from 7 August 2026, when the counter was fixed, and always with the count behind the share, because the counts are small.
- What we left out, and why
- This page lists our strongest results, not typical ones. Some of our metrics sit below the industry benchmarks. The single-site rows were picked because they went well, and sites that did worse are not in that list. We also leave out raw visit counts, because our counters still let through bots that pose as browsers, anything before May 2026, and AI visit counts before 7 August 2026.
- Comparing with the industry
- Our growth compares two months within one period, on sites we kept working on. The industry studies compare a year with the year before. So read them as context, an industry that's flat or down, not as a multiple. Each study has its own sample: SEOcrawl's sites are its customers who opted in, Graphite sells SEO services, and Conductor's domains are its enterprise customers.
- When we checked
- Every figure was re-run on Cite-Met's production data on 2 November 2026, Toronto time. The industry figures were read on each study's own page.
Last checked November 2, 2026. Want the same numbers for your own site? Get the free audit