CastingForgingSource: a thousand Bing AI citations for a B2B export site with modest Google traffic
A merchant exporter of castings and forgings launched a new domain to reach OEM buyers in the United States and Europe, a market where the buyer's first search is a specification question and Google's results are filled with directories.
- Timeline
- First Google impressions 11 December 2025; data to 11 October 2026
- Stages covered
- AccessUnderstandTrustCite
Headline results
50 to 325
Citations in Bing AI answers per month · Apr vs Sep 2026
Source: Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance
465 to 1,782
Google impressions per month · Jan vs Sep 2026
Source: Search Console, web search
7 to 22
Google clicks per month · Jan vs Sep 2026
Source: Search Console, web search
240 to 279
Impressions in Google AI features per month · Jun vs Sep 2026
Source: Search Console, Generative AI features filter
Month by month
The whole series, not just the two ends
Monthly totals summed from the daily exports. The first month starts at the first recorded impression; October 2026 is partial and left out.
| Month | Value |
|---|---|
| Dec 25 | 2 |
| Jan | 7 |
| Feb | 5 |
| Mar | 14 |
| Apr | 8 |
| May | 19 |
| Jun | 12 |
| Jul | 14 |
| Aug | 33 |
| Sep | 22 |
| Month | Value |
|---|---|
| Dec 25 | 252 |
| Jan | 465 |
| Feb | 997 |
| Mar | 1,111 |
| Apr | 1,130 |
| May | 1,926 |
| Jun | 1,959 |
| Jul | 1,897 |
| Aug | 2,638 |
| Sep | 1,782 |
| Month | Value |
|---|---|
| Dec 25 | not reported |
| Jan | not reported |
| Feb | not reported |
| Mar | not reported |
| Apr | not reported |
| May | 55 |
| Jun | 240 |
| Jul | 384 |
| Aug | 474 |
| Sep | 279 |
| Month | Value |
|---|---|
| Dec 25 | not reported |
| Jan | not reported |
| Feb | not reported |
| Mar | not reported |
| Apr | 50 |
| May | 59 |
| Jun | 93 |
| Jul | 218 |
| Aug | 236 |
| Sep | 325 |
Context
The property, and what the exports show
The property
CastingForgingSource is a Rajkot-based merchant exporter connecting overseas OEM buyers with certified Indian foundries and forges. It is one of our own properties. The site has process, materials, industries, quality and services sections, a quote form, a blog and nine language versions.
What happened
Google’s query report is almost all zero-click specification searches: “casting and forging equipment exporters” (387 impressions, position 8.1, no clicks), “cast and forged parts export” (237 impressions, position 7.2, no clicks). The United States supplies 5,648 impressions but 14 clicks. India supplies 93 of the 140 clicks, which includes supplier-side and own-team traffic.
In GA4, chatgpt.com and Perplexity account for 9 of 308 sessions. Clarity recorded 279 sessions, of which 207 were returning users, and 86% were on desktop Chrome, which points to a small number of repeat visitors (buyers comparing, or the team) rather than a broad audience.
Approach
Stages this engagement covered
Filled stages are the ones we worked on.
- 1Access
- 2Understand
- 3Trust
- 4Retrieve
- 5Cite
- 6Convert
Build the site as a reference: a materials page with eighteen specification tables, process sections covering fifteen casting and fifteen forging methods, certification statements, FAQ markup and nine language versions. Then measure whether reference content gets cited even before it ranks. Stages Access, Understand, Trust and Cite.
What we did
Changes, in order of impact
- A materials and alloys page covering thirteen metal categories with eighteen specification tables, FAQPage markup and an ItemList. It is the second most-shown page in Google's AI features (359 impressions) and the second page by Google impressions (3,019).
- LocalBusiness and Organization entity data with address, contact point, opening hours and an OfferCatalog of processes, plus AggregateRating and FAQPage on the home page.
- Certification statements (ISO 9001:2015, PED, CE, IBR, AS9100D) stated in text on the home page and repeated in llms.txt, so the trust claims are readable without rendering.
- Nine language versions linked from the header for buyers in Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Russian markets.
- robots.txt open to every crawler, a page and blog sitemap pair, and llms.txt and ai.txt dated at launch (10 December 2025).
Results
Before and after, same sources, same window
| Metric | Before | After | Window | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citations in Bing AI answers per month | 50 | 325 | Apr vs Sep 2026 | Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance |
| Google impressions per month | 465 | 1,782 | Jan vs Sep 2026 | Search Console, web search |
| Google clicks per month | 7 | 22 | Jan vs Sep 2026 | Search Console, web search |
| Impressions in Google AI features per month | 240 | 279 | Jun vs Sep 2026 | Search Console, Generative AI features filter |
Open questions
What did not work, and what comes next
Not yet working, or not yet known
- Click-through rate on Google is 1.0% overall and 0.25% from the United States. Being shown for "exporters" and "wholesalers" queries at positions 7 to 15 is not producing visits; the titles and snippets are the next thing to test.
- Bing clicks dropped to zero in September while citations peaked. A citation in an AI answer is not a visit, and this site shows the gap plainly.
- GA4 has no key events, so quote requests are not counted. That is the metric that matters for an exporter and it is missing from this report.
What we would do next
- Track quote-form submissions as a key event.
- Rewrite the titles on the process pages for the zero-click specification queries.
- Run the Lab prompt method against the buyer questions Bing already cites this site for, to see whether ChatGPT and Google answer them the same way.
Related services
How we do this work
Entity SEO
Make your company unambiguous to machines
Learn more about Entity SEOGenerative engine optimization
Content that generated answers can cite
Learn more about Generative engine optimization