Case studies

Case studies: three engagements, measured in Search Console.

The search numbers on this page come from each client's own Google Search Console; the Source column names anything else. Two clients agreed to be named; the third is anonymized. Where a result has more than one plausible cause, or did not move at all, we say so.

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Foundation repair and waterproofing · Greater Montreal, Quebec

Foundation repair contractor, Greater Montreal: 51% more search clicks from fewer impressions

Period
Campaign from February to July 2026. Results measured 11 June to 10 September 2026, against the same weeks of 2025.
Client
Sous-Sols Experts
Scope
  • Technical SEO
  • Bilingual SEO
  • Content
  • Index cleanup
  • Google Business Profile cleanup
Before and after: Foundation repair contractor, Greater Montreal
Metric Before After Window Source
Search clicks 284 430 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Search impressions 113,902 79,148 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Click-through rate 0.25% 0.54% Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Mobile average position 37.1 15.6 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Non-brand search clicks 44 42 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Mobile Largest Contentful Paint 5.0 to 9.5 s 3.4 s at end of campaign, back to 6.2 s in July Before March 2026 vs June 2026 PageSpeed / Lighthouse readings, campaign log
Security header score 54 96 May 2026 vs end of campaign Independent header scan, campaign log

The situation

A foundation repair and waterproofing contractor serving Greater Montreal, selling to a bilingual market from a WordPress site. We had run shorter SEO plans for this client in earlier years. By early 2026 the site itself was the bottleneck: the French and English versions were not configured to reach the right searchers, mobile pages took 5 to 9.5 seconds to show their main content, 41 of 85 URLs were not indexed, and thin suburb pages were earning impressions in areas the company does not serve.

What we did

Between March and July 2026:

  • Set up the bilingual configuration properly: reciprocal hreflang, locale tags, French URL structure.
  • Removed a tracking script that was dragging load times. Mobile Largest Contentful Paint reached 3.4 seconds, performance score 91.
  • Hardened security headers (independent score 54 to 96).
  • Replaced conflicting schema blocks with one clean business graph carrying the licence number and rating.
  • Shipped 17 bilingual articles and pillar pages.
  • Redirected 8 thin suburb pages, removed archive pages from the index, resubmitted the sitemap.
  • Audited the Google Business Profile, then cleaned up its primary category and services list in June.

What moved

Google Search Console, same season year over year (11 June to 10 September, 2025 vs 2026):

  • Clicks: 284 to 430 (+51%)
  • Impressions: 113,902 to 79,148 (-31%)
  • Click-through rate: 0.25% to 0.54%
  • Mobile average position: 37.1 to 15.6

Fewer impressions and more clicks was the intended shape: far-away searches that never clicked dropped out.

What did not move

Clicks on searches that do not include the company name were flat: 44 to 42. The growth came through brand searches and the Google Business Profile, whose website link produced 141 of the 430 clicks. Our profile cleanup and our index work both landed in June, so we cannot say how much of the gain each one produced.

Part of the speed gain was lost in July: mobile load went back to 6.2 seconds.

Reviews, the real constraint on the most valuable query in this trade, stayed near 20 against map-pack competitors carrying 32 to over 1,000. On that query, the site ended the campaign outside the map pack, the top 12 organic results and Google’s AI Overview.

What we would do differently

Next time, the review program starts in week one, before the content.

Heavy civil construction, excavation and aggregates · Eastern Quebec

Heavy civil contractor, eastern Quebec: named in 9 of 10 AI answers, and why search clicks stayed flat

Period
11 February to 10 September 2026.
Client
Les Entreprises Jacques Dufour & Fils Inc.
Scope
  • Local SEO
  • AI search visibility (GEO)
  • Service pages
  • Branch location page
  • Google Business Profile
  • Conversion tracking
Before and after: Heavy civil contractor, eastern Quebec
Metric Before After Window Source
Branch page impressions 0 (page did not exist) 1,949 Aug 3 to Sep 10, 2026 Google Search Console
Branch page average position n/a 4.3 Aug 3 to Sep 10, 2026 Google Search Console
Mobile average position 9.2 4.5 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Desktop average position 26.9 20.1 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Non-brand search clicks 3 14 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Total search clicks 843 841 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Total search impressions 24,184 20,440 Jun 11 to Sep 10, 2025 vs 2026 Google Search Console
Tracked phone clicks Not tracked 3 Aug 3 to Aug 23, 2026 GA4
AI answers naming the company, same 4 questions and models 3 of 4 4 of 4 Jul 22 vs Sep 8, 2026 Perplexity and Gemini, web search on
AI answers naming it first, newer model of each engine Not measured 4 of 4 Sep 8, 2026 Perplexity and Gemini, web search on
AI answers showing a wrong web address 1 of 4 0 of 4 Jul 22 vs Aug 23, 2026 Perplexity and Gemini, web search on

The situation

A family-owned heavy civil contractor in eastern Quebec: excavation, earthworks, roadwork, crushing and aggregates, run from a head office and one branch in another region. We have maintained their website since 2022 and have managed their main Google Business Profile since a first SEO mandate in 2024. When this mandate started in February 2026, search traffic was almost entirely people typing the company name. Service pages were thin, the branch had no page of its own, and a duplicate listing we did not control competed with the real ones.

In AI assistant answers, the company did not come up at all at the start, and our April audit scored the site 55 out of 100 for AI readiness. By our first formal test in July, after the April page rebuild, it was named in 3 of 4 answers (four buyer questions, Perplexity and Gemini with web search on) and first in 1. It was still left out of the answer on excavation and civil work, its core trade, one answer reduced it to an aggregates producer, and another displayed a web address that was not the company’s.

What we did

  • Audited the site in April and rebuilt the core service pages: excavation, earthworks, crushing, aggregates, roadwork.
  • Launched a dedicated branch page on 2 August, with location-specific titles across the site.
  • Consolidated a tracking-tagged duplicate of the homepage that Google was indexing separately.
  • Gave AI assistants one unambiguous company to cite: structured data with a stable identity, the canonical web address and links to its official profiles, plus llms.txt and llms-full.txt files describing the full range of work.
  • Made that range explicit on the service pages, rock excavation and drilling and blasting included, and edited every page we touched into proper Quebec French.
  • Wired phone-click tracking in GA4.
  • Updated both Google Business Profiles on 23 August to match the new pages: primary categories, service areas, 26 services.
  • Tested AI answers in July, then re-tested in August and September on the same four questions, the last time on two models per engine.

What moved

  • The branch page was indexed within 14 days. From 3 August to 10 September 2026 it earned 1,949 impressions at an average position of 4.3 (Google Search Console).
  • Mobile average position, same season year over year (11 June to 10 September, 2025 vs 2026): 9.2 to 4.5. Desktop: 26.9 to 20.1.
  • Searches that include neither the company name nor its initials: 3 to 14 clicks over the same windows. Small numbers, but these are people who did not already know the company.
  • The first tracked phone clicks: 3 in the three weeks after the August deploy, all from the excavation page (GA4). There is no earlier baseline because the tracking did not exist.
  • AI answers: absent when the mandate started, named in 3 of 4 in July, then in 4 of 4 on 8 September on the same questions and models, excavation and civil work included. On the newer model of each engine, it came first in all 4. Counting a fifth question asked on two ChatGPT models (the best civil contractors in its home region), 9 of the 10 answers named the company and 5 put it first.

Every answer that named the company cited its own website, and the wrong address from July was gone by the August re-test. The directory listings were still untouched at that point, so the gain came from the site itself: what the engines repeated was the full range of work and the continuous coverage from the head office region to the branch, with the branch page among the cited sources.

What did not move

Total clicks did not grow: 843 to 841, same season year over year, on 24,184 then 20,440 impressions. Most clicks are still brand searches.

The branch page ranks, but it turned 1,949 impressions into 11 clicks: for "service plus town" searches, the map pack sits above the organic results and takes the click. The profile update was the answer to that, and the engagement paused in September before we could measure it.

AI answers move with the model. On the ChatGPT question, one model named the company first and the next one did not name it at all. We read any single answer as a signal, never a ranking, and test at least two models per engine before we report a result.

Google’s own AI Overviews did not move: at our last check in August, the tracked answers for these trade searches in Quebec French mentioned neither this company nor any other regional contractor.

What we would do differently

With hindsight, we would update the branch’s Google Business Profile the day the branch page goes live, not three weeks later. For a contractor serving specific towns, the local pack decides who gets the call, and the page ranks under it. We would also run the four-question AI test in February, so the climb from absent to first is measured end to end rather than from July.

Forestry and agricultural excavation · Chaudière-Appalaches, Quebec

Forestry and agricultural excavation contractor: a new bilingual site’s first four months in search

Period
Site live by 2 June 2026; measured 2 June to 23 September 2026. A four-month SEO campaign on this site starts in October 2026, and we will update this case study with its results when it ends.
Scope
  • Website build
  • Bilingual site
  • Service page content
  • Structured data
  • Google Business Profile setup
Before and after: Forestry and agricultural excavation contractor, Chaudière-Appalaches
Metric Before After Window Source
Search impressions 641 1,437 First 30 days live (Jun 2 to Jul 1) vs latest 30 (Aug 25 to Sep 23), 2026 Google Search Console
Search clicks 28 29 First 30 days live vs latest 30, 2026 Google Search Console
Mobile average position 7.7 7.3 First 30 days live vs latest 30, 2026 Google Search Console
Desktop average position 23.1 36.4 First 30 days live vs latest 30, 2026 Google Search Console

The situation

A family-run excavation contractor in Chaudière-Appalaches, more than 30 years in business, working for farmers, woodlot owners and industrial clients: agricultural and forestry excavation, brush clearing, heavy equipment transport. A long-standing client of ours. They needed a site that looked like the company they are, in French and English, without a CMS nobody would log into. Four services, a handful of pages, content that changes maybe twice a year.

What we did

  • Built a static bilingual site with no WordPress: no plugins to patch, no CMS host, no license to renew. Content lives in the code, so we handle the rare edits.
  • Expanded the four service pages to roughly five times their launch length on 3 June. The client had supplied draft copy of their own; we compared it page by page against the live copy, kept what was better, cut titles and descriptions to display length, flagged three factual claims for the owner to confirm, and added FAQ blocks with FAQPage schema.
  • Added business and service structured data.
  • Set up the Google Business Profile and pushed a stuck verification through Google support until the listing went live on 7 July.

What moved

Google Search Console, first 30 days live (2 June to 1 July 2026) vs the latest 30 days (25 August to 23 September 2026):

  • Impressions: 641 to 1,437
  • Clicks: 28 to 29
  • Mobile average position: 7.7 to 7.3

About 100 clicks in four months, with the heavy equipment transport page as the top service page (26 clicks).

What did not move

Clicks. Impressions more than doubled, but most of the growth came from desktop searches where the site sits deep (desktop average position went from 23.1 to 36.4): broad, province-wide queries the site is not close to winning. Search demand in this niche is thin to begin with, which the keyword research flagged the week the site went live.

There is also no clean before. Search Console holds no data for the domain before 2 June 2026, so this is a launch curve, not a before-and-after.

What we would do differently

Next time we would connect Search Console a few months before the rebuild to capture a baseline, and start the Google Business Profile verification a month before launch rather than alongside it.

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