WoodCharcoal.in: from launch to 206 Google clicks a month in five months
A new domain selling wood, bamboo and coconut-shell charcoal to Indian buyers had no search history, a crowded commodity category and buyers who ask comparison questions before they ask for a price.
- Timeline
- First Google impressions 3 May 2026; data to 11 October 2026
- Stages covered
- AccessUnderstandRetrieveCite
Headline results
67 to 206
Google clicks per month · Jun vs Sep 2026
Source: Search Console, web search
3,561 to 13,802
Google impressions per month · Jun vs Sep 2026
Source: Search Console, web search
441 to 2,021
Impressions in Google AI features per month · Jun vs Sep 2026
Source: Search Console, Generative AI features filter
51 to 127
Citations in Bing AI answers per month · Jun vs Sep 2026
Source: Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance
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 |
|---|---|
| May | 15 |
| Jun | 67 |
| Jul | 121 |
| Aug | 133 |
| Sep | 206 |
| Month | Value |
|---|---|
| May | 938 |
| Jun | 3,561 |
| Jul | 6,054 |
| Aug | 10,489 |
| Sep | 13,802 |
| Month | Value |
|---|---|
| May | 40 |
| Jun | 441 |
| Jul | 876 |
| Aug | 1,421 |
| Sep | 2,021 |
| Month | Value |
|---|---|
| May | 0 |
| Jun | 51 |
| Jul | 145 |
| Aug | 38 |
| Sep | 127 |
Context
The property, and what the exports show
The property
WoodCharcoal.in sells charcoal made from wood, bamboo and coconut shell, in lumps, briquettes, powder and activated grades, to Indian retail and wholesale buyers. It is one of our own properties, which is why we can publish its data in full. The site is a static build with a 107-URL sitemap: product pages grouped by raw material, form-factor hubs, a comparison page, a wholesale page, a blog and an MSDS resource page.
What happened
Average position is impression-weighted from the daily export. The query mix is category terms rather than brand: “bamboo charcoal” (3,713 impressions, position 6.9), “wood charcoal” (1,371), “coconut charcoal” (1,363) and “coconut shell charcoal” (1,042). India accounts for 451 of 595 clicks; the United States, the Philippines and Nigeria follow, which matches the wholesale and export pages.
The pages that earned clicks are the ones that answer a question before asking for an order: the bamboo charcoal category (81 clicks), the MSDS page (70 clicks at a 6.0% click-through rate) and the wholesale page (45 clicks).
In GA4, chatgpt.com appears as a session source 51 times out of 446 sessions in the export window (11%), split across the ai-assistant, referral and not-set mediums. Copilot and Perplexity appear once each. GA4 cannot tell us which answers produced those visits; the Lab method on this site exists to measure that directly.
Approach
Stages this engagement covered
Filled stages are the ones we worked on.
- 1Access
- 2Understand
- 3Trust
- 4Retrieve
- 5Cite
- 6Convert
Build the catalogue so every product answers the buyer's first question on the page: a three-way comparison page, per-product specifications, safety data sheets and a wholesale page, all open to search and AI crawlers from day one. Stages Access, Understand, Retrieve and Cite.
What we did
Changes, in order of impact
- A comparison page (wood vs bamboo vs coconut-shell charcoal) with a property table for fixed carbon, ash and burn time, plus FAQPage markup. It is the second most-shown page in Google's AI features.
- Product pages organised by raw material and form factor (lumps, briquettes, powder, activated), each with HSN code and technical specifications, and a safety data sheet (MSDS) resource page that became the second-highest-clicked URL.
- Organization, WebSite and FAQPage structured data site-wide, with a single Organization entity for the brand.
- robots.txt that allows all crawlers and names OAI-SearchBot explicitly, an XML sitemap of 107 URLs, and llms.txt and ai.txt files describing the catalogue.
- A wholesale page (MOQ, export readiness) as the conversion path for bulk buyers, separate from the retail cart.
Results
Before and after, same sources, same window
| Metric | Before | After | Window | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google clicks per month | 67 | 206 | Jun vs Sep 2026 | Search Console, web search |
| Google impressions per month | 3,561 | 13,802 | Jun vs Sep 2026 | Search Console, web search |
| Impressions in Google AI features per month | 441 | 2,021 | Jun vs Sep 2026 | Search Console, Generative AI features filter |
| Citations in Bing AI answers per month | 51 | 127 | Jun vs Sep 2026 | Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance |
Open questions
What did not work, and what comes next
Not yet working, or not yet known
- Click-through rate fell from 2.0% in July to 1.5% in September while impressions tripled. New impressions arrived at lower positions (the long tail), which is normal for a growing site, but the product-snippet rich results (40 clicks from 1,786 impressions) are not yet pulling their weight.
- 106 of 466 Clarity sessions were returning users and dead clicks appear in 20% of sessions, so there is a usability item on the list before any further content work.
- GA4 recorded no key events for this property, so conversions cannot be reported here.
What we would do next
- Register the product-snippet pages in Merchant Center so the 1,786 product-snippet impressions can become merchant listings.
- Fix the dead-click targets Clarity recorded (20% of sessions).
- Add the comparison page's property table to each product page so every product can be cited on its own.
Related services
How we do this work
Content strategy
Topics your buyers actually research
Learn more about Content strategyGenerative engine optimization
Content that generated answers can cite
Learn more about Generative engine optimization