AI search is rewarding new sites faster than Google is right now, and our own data from month one makes the case more clearly than I expected.
We started publishing in early April. By May 6, Bing AI was citing us 100 times in a single day across 5 pages. Google had sent us 5 clicks total in 3 months. Those two numbers sitting next to each other forced a recalibration of how I think about where to focus for the next 90 days.
This is the first post in an ongoing series where I document the ClickWerxs SEO build in public — real numbers, honest assessments, decisions made and why. No vanity framing.
What we built in month one
Between early April and May 9, we published 28 English posts and 22 Spanish posts across payments, CRM, web design, SEO, and marketing. The strategy was built around two bets: own the merchant services search cluster that we had zero presence in, and target AI citation gaps — specific, technical topics where no neutral merchant-facing guide existed.
The editorial calendar was structured around keyword data but filtered through a harder question: could this post be written from web search alone? If yes, we didn't write it, or we didn't publish it without operator-specific detail layered in. Most of the payments content came with real merchant scenarios, actual statement data, and specific regulatory sources.
Posts went out three per week. The Spanish versions were prioritized for posts with LATAM relevance — our core client base in Mexico and Colombia needs different context than a US merchant, and we built that into each translation rather than just localizing the text.
What the Google data actually shows
The site existed before April. Through February and most of March, Google was showing us for 2–8 impressions on a handful of days. No real indexation, no rankings worth counting.
Starting around April 8, impressions began climbing. By April 13, we were at 100 impressions in a day. April 27 peaked at 372 impressions in a single day. By early May, we were averaging 150–200 impressions per day.
Total impressions across the full 3-month GSC window: 3,537. Of those, 3,490 came after the content push started. The site effectively didn't exist to Google before April.
The click number is harder to look at honestly: 5 clicks in 3 months on 3,537 impressions. That's a 0.14% CTR. The reason is position. Almost every query we're appearing for is ranking in the 40–100 range. We're visible, but we're on page 4–10. Google is seeing the content and deciding where it fits; it just hasn't decided we belong near the top yet.
Here's what doesn't get enough attention in the aggregate numbers: this site hit page one in both English and Spanish within the first month of publishing. Not a soft metric, not a near-miss — page one.
The Square Issuing V2 gift card review is ranking at position 7 for "square issuing v2 vs competitors 2025 2026." For a domain with almost no established authority and essentially zero link equity, that's a result. Most SEOs will tell you a new site needs 6–12 months before you see page one rankings on anything competitive. We got there in under six weeks on a product comparison that matters to real merchants evaluating card issuing infrastructure.
The Spanish result is arguably better. The ecommerce payment processing setup guide is sitting at position 2.9 for "cómo configurar el procesamiento de pagos para una tienda online." Top 3. On a Spanish-language query with real commercial intent, against established LATAM fintech publishers. The content is built for how a merchant in Mexico or Colombia actually thinks about this problem, which is a different document than the English version. That specificity is what got it there.
The "crm onboarding" query is at position 59.5 with 24 impressions. That's the near-miss on the list that needs a dedicated post, not a service page doing the work. It's Post 12 in our editorial calendar.
The Bing AI numbers
This is the part I didn't expect.
Bing's AI Performance data starts April 20. First citation was April 21 — one citation, one page. Sporadic activity through the end of April: 13 citations on April 25, 26 citations on April 27, then dropping back to single digits.
May changed the pattern. May 5, the day "What Is Payment Processing" went live, citations jumped to 70 in one day. May 6: 100 citations, 5 pages cited. That's not a search engine deciding a post is useful. That's an AI deciding our content is the answer to multiple related queries, repeatedly, on the same day.
Total across the 17-day tracking window: 290 citations, 13 days with at least one citation.
I don't have the query-level breakdown in the Bing export — it shows aggregate daily volume and cited page count, not the specific queries triggering each citation. What I can see from the search term data is that posts like the Square Issuing V2 comparison were described in our own planning notes as hitting 18 citations on one query type. The pattern that's emerging is consistent with what we hypothesized: specific topic name, evaluation framing, zero neutral competition equals citation capture.
The crypto cluster is getting the most Google impressions — 152 impressions for "crypto payment processing," 132 for "crypto payments for business" — but at positions 89–92, which is deep enough to not matter yet. The Bing AI behavior is inverting that: newer, more specific posts on narrower topics are getting cited before the broader category pages find their footing in Google.
The honest counterargument
290 citations is not 290 customers. AI citations don't have a clean conversion path yet. There's no UTM parameter that says "clicked from Bing AI answer." The SEO industry broadly doesn't know how to measure AI citation value, and I'm not going to pretend we've solved it.
The strongest argument against prioritizing AI citation is that we're optimizing for something we can't track to revenue. If Google clicks are 5 in month one, AI citations might be generating zero additional business this month and we'd have no way to know.
I think that argument is correct and doesn't change the strategy. A brand that gets cited 100 times in a day by an AI assistant is building recognition in a channel that's growing faster than traditional search. The measurement problem is real; the channel is also real.
What we're doing in month two
Three decisions coming directly from month one data:
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The CRM onboarding post gets written next. Position 59.5 with 24 impressions on a commercial-intent query is the clearest gap the data shows. A service page is doing the work a dedicated blog post should be doing.
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The Spanish content accelerates. The position 2.9 result on the ecommerce processing query is the kind of signal you don't ignore. Spanish search for LATAM merchants is less competitive than English, the content is written for LATAM context rather than just translated, and the LATAM comparison pages are already getting traction on Bing.
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The crypto cluster gets a focused post, not more service pages. 152 impressions at position 89 means Google is seeing something but ranking it low. The existing crypto content is service pages and broad guides. A specific, operator-level post — "ACH vs Crypto for B2B Merchants: Actual Cost Comparison" or something equally narrow — is more likely to generate an AI citation and a top-20 Google ranking than another category page.
Every one of those decisions gets reported against next month: what shipped, what didn't, and what the data did in response. Read the month two results here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Bing AI citation tracking?
Bing Webmaster Tools includes an AI Performance section that shows daily citation counts — how many times Bing's AI (Copilot) cited pages from your site in responses, and how many distinct pages were cited. It doesn't show which queries triggered the citations, just the aggregate daily volume. It's an imperfect but real signal of AI search visibility.
How do you measure SEO progress in month one for a new site?
The most honest measure is impression volume in Google Search Console — total times your pages appeared in search results, regardless of position. Clicks are low on a new site because positions are low. Impressions tell you whether Google has indexed and ranked the content at all. Month one for a new site is about getting indexed, not about ranking on page one.
Why are AI citations and Google clicks so different?
AI systems like Bing Copilot and Google's AI Overviews prioritize direct, specific answers to queries. A well-structured post that directly answers a specific question can get cited by AI search before it ranks highly in traditional results. Traditional Google ranking depends on domain authority, link equity, and time — all of which a new site lacks. AI citation is faster to acquire and depends more on content structure and specificity.
Is this blog post itself part of the SEO strategy?
Yes. The case study format — specific numbers, honest assessment, decisions reported against what the data actually did — is designed to be citable by AI systems and to rank for queries like "clickwerxs seo results" and "seo month one case study." It also creates accountability: publishing this commits us to reporting the actual numbers in month two.
This is operator opinion, not a guarantee of results for your site. SEO timelines vary by domain age, niche, and content quality.
Kaleb Dickhaut — Founder, ClickWerxs. Kaleb builds websites and SEO infrastructure for service businesses, payments companies, and agencies.
linkedin.com/in/kaleb-dickhaut
Sources
- ClickWerxs blog, first-party data — Search Console, Bing Webmaster and GA4 figures in this post are measured from ClickWerxs's own properties over the stated period. They are a past result for one domain in one vertical and are not a projection of what any other site will achieve. Operator data.
- Competitor and platform pricing referenced in this post is taken from each company's published pricing or legal pages as of the date noted in text, and is subject to change without notice. ClickWerxs does not link to competitor websites; references are given in text so they remain verifiable. No affiliation is implied.
ClickWerxs sells SEO and AI visibility services and earns revenue from those engagements. First-party figures are past results for this blog and are not a promise of future performance. This is operator opinion, not professional advice.