Four adversarial QA passes reviewed all sixteen deliverables against their data packs, the previous month's packs, every tab in each folder and each account's standing rules. All sixteen came back "do not send" on first review, including three that their own builder had already self-verified clean. Between them the passes produced more than forty material findings, and every one has been worked through.
Three findings ran in our favour and are corrected: an Australian revenue share stated as "over half" where it is 47%, competitor Domain Ratings quoted low enough to support "more than double" where the real multiple is 1.7x, and an enquiry comparison showing +58% where two retired tracking events put the like-for-like at +29%. One ran against us: a guarantee baseline understated by about 6%, which lowered our own bar on money a client is owed.
| Client | September headline | Before you send |
|---|---|---|
| Pink Bins ↗ Send |
Organic revenue $20,030 from 44 purchases, up 5.9% on August. Clicks 2,255, up 5.1%. Live check: 31 of 35 ranking, 13 in the top 3, 7 at number 1. | The revenue lift is average order value, not more jobs: orders fell from 46 to 44. The $1,000 plan figure is the approved pricing exception on this account. |
| Sinclair Plumbing ↗ Send |
321 search views in the window, down from 391, still inside the strongest fifth of 393 windows measured. | The "all-time high" claim is gone: 391 ranked sixth and the real peak is 403. A favourable year-on-year has been added, views 276 to 321 and calls 13 to 20, including the one that fell. |
| HD Plumbing & Gas ↗ Send |
"Plumber Feilding" in the top 3 from all 169 grid points. Calls 58 to 102 across the two terms. | Bathroom renovations corrected to zero, because a grid 0 is a not-found sentinel rather than a position, and coverage corrected from 516 to 515 of 1,521. |
| A&M Detailing ↗ Send |
148 clicks against August's 151, on 10.8% fewer impressions, with click-through up to 0.58%. | Year on year is a steep fall, 441 to 148, and the decomposition is 51% exposure against 49% click rate, so AI answers explain at most half. The branded split was recovered from the August pack. |
| Frontline Security ↗ Send |
233 clicks, down 10.7%, on 26.7% fewer impressions, with click-through up to 1.22%. | Enquiries fell about a third on flat traffic and the cause is not established, so the report asks them directly. The August tab's "Google's AI is citing you" claim is retracted. Their notes mark the Notable upsell parked. |
| Drop Bear Adventures ↗ Send |
Bookings 226, up 14.1% on August and down 19.3% on last September. Live check on the correct domain: 18 of 23 ranking, 6 in the top 3, 3 at number 1. | The rank check had been scoring the legacy domain and is rebuilt on the live site. The click fall is 86% fewer impressions rather than AI answers. Two panels Hana pays for are missing for a second month, now acknowledged on the page. |
| The Haven on K'gari ↗ Send |
Clicks 464, up 113%. Organic overtook paid search for the first time at real scale. | No rank check ran, because there is no tracked keyword list, so the August positions are dated to 2 September throughout. |
| Will & Wind ↗ Send |
Organic revenue A$3,336 from 22 orders, up 163%. Clicks 814, up 12.6%. | That 12.6% is 36.3% more exposure at 83% of last year's click rate. Small base: nine extra orders moved it. Their story tab no longer says "stop the retainer". |
| Eden Orchards ↗ Send |
Organic revenue $16,136, down 29.1% on August and 23.1% on last September. Purchases 116 from 144. | Carries a 2x guarantee, $60,000 attributable net-new by month six, so the direction matters. $160,528 of September revenue, 35.5%, is unattributable in GA4, so the organic figure is a floor. |
| Ageless You ↗ Send |
Site revenue up 46% to $63,227, of which 68% of the increase is paid social and email. Organic revenue down 14.5%, orders down 29%. | One month in, and nothing of ours was live until 6 October, so this is a before picture. Carries a 3x and $90,000 guarantee, now worded as the agreement words it. Our rate card and a stale strategy PDF are both unlinked. |
| Roman Blinds Direct ↗ Send |
No usable search story: the Search Console property is on the wrong hostname and recorded 0 clicks on 2 impressions. | GA4 is the only real source, 585 organic sessions. No revenue figure is published, because 5 of 20 September orders carry no order value. The workroom wording now matches the approved line. |
| Growth Maintenance ↗ Final month |
Clicks 226, down 7.8% on August and up 65.0% on last September. Grid 405 of 1,014 points in the top 3. | Closing record, no forward promises and no pitch. GA4 access was removed before the final pull, so there is no September GA4 data, which the page explains without naming the handover. |
| Eftpos Now ↗ Final month |
Clicks 531, essentially flat, on 11.3% fewer impressions. 32 of 37 tracked searches now carry a Google AI answer. | Closing record. The highest AI-answer saturation in the book, which is the story: exposure fell, visits held, so the rate rose. The Notable pitch is gone from the August tab. |
| Nature Baby ↗ Send Six-month report |
NZ organic search revenue $262,597 to $598,136. AU Google visits up 28.7% on the pre-kickoff window. | Link the /six-month tab, not the root, which still serves the July three-month report. None of the roughly 160 contracted content pieces is live, which the report states plainly. Two wrong claims on the August tab are corrected. |
| Remarkable Auto ↗ With the call |
Calls 173 in the window, fourth of the twelve measured. Website clicks past a hundred for the first time in the reporting windows. | They gave notice on 21 September and run to 19 November. Send only alongside the call you have asked Nathan for. The pages carry no mention of the notice, the end date or his complaint. |
| Online Patios ↗ Send |
First tab, baseline. Clicks 2,906, up 28.0% on last September, down 3.2% on August. AI visits 110 from 58. | Revenue left off. GA4 shows Paid Search at $0 (from $71,115) and no purchases on 1 to 6 and 10 to 14 Sep, so tracking looks broken. Worth asking Glenn about his Google Ads. One ask: dcpatios.com.au Search Console. |
| Ernesto Buono ↗ Send |
First tab. Clicks 1,398, up 41.8% on last September, down 5.7% on August. AI visits 226 from 160. | No ecommerce tracking, so no revenue. No guarantee language anywhere. Their team left the shared Slack (26 Sep, 2 Oct). Google's own email to them shows 1.44K clicks (domain property we don't hold). robots.txt fix still not uploaded by their developer. |
| The Flatpack Company ↗ Send |
First tab, baseline (no kick-off yet). Organic revenue $165,905, up 62.8%; clicks 6,869, up 55.5%. | The jump is mostly brand-name searches; nothing of ours is live, and the email says September is the starting line. Stephen works in Slack, so a Slack post may suit him better. Student-shop sessions are not filtered out. |
| Five Star Napkins ↗ Send |
First tab, baseline before Tuesday's kick-off. Organic revenue US$1,871 of US$69,724. Clicks 560, down 57.7% on last September. | AI visits are 47 with their ChatGPT ads excluded (the pull now does this for everyone). Asks about the Shopify app and demographic export: confirm with Alex nothing has landed in his inbox. |
Seventeen drafts are sitting in your Gmail, each on its own new thread with a "Your September 2026 Report" subject. Nothing has been sent. Each card shows the email exactly as drafted, with buttons to open the draft in Gmail and to open the report the client will see. Your signature appends automatically when you send, so it is not shown here.
Report links use the client-facing addresses each client was given last month, which are all live on the September tab. Three have irregular names: am-detailing-report, remarkable-auto-report and naturebaby-report. DCIS has no draft, because it is held.
Hey Craig 😁
Back from holiday and straight into your numbers! Here's your September report.
Organic search brought in $20,030 last month, up from $18,915 in August, so roughly 20x what goes into the plan each month 🤩 Clicks were up on August too.
The extra dollars came from bigger orders rather than more of them (44 jobs against 46), so we're keeping an eye on that.
Google's AI answers are now sitting on about 14 of your 35 tracked searches, and that's a big part of why clicks are down on last year.
Thanks so much for sending the Entity Pack back, Jay! 🙌 Two quick updates for the site from your answers:
The hire duration mix-up between pages is already sorted 👍
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Ali 😁
I'm back! Here's your September report.
Calls came in at 20 against 18 the window before, and 13 in the same stretch last year 🙌 Search views came off August's high to 321, but that's still up on 276 this time last year.
Lower Hutt has overtaken Upper Hutt on the map this month, and there are 49 Upper Hutt spots sitting at 4th or 5th that we're working to pull back into the top 3. Plus another 10 reviews landed, taking you to 158 ⭐
The one thing still sitting with you is the Entity Pack and Brand Kit interviews from 7 September. Three answers would make the biggest difference:
Anything you want me to dig into?
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Hayden 😁
Back from holiday! Here's your September report.
"Plumber Feilding" now shows you in the top 3 from every single one of the 169 points we check across the map 🤩 And with 138 reviews you've nudged one ahead of Uneeda on 137!
The gap is still bathroom renovations and drainlayer, which don't show up anywhere yet. That's the service pages we scoped with you and Caleb in March, a proper page for each so Google has something specific to rank. Keen to get those moving?
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Isaac 😊
Here's your September report!
Clicks held steady at 148 even though Google showed the site less often, so more of the people who saw you clicked through 👍 They're well down on this time last year though, 441 back then.
The harder news is rankings: on our live check nothing is in the top 3 right now, where three were in early September, and "ceramic coating Auckland" has slipped to 6.
Winning that back is the priority, and the Brand Kit and Entity Pack you've just finished are exactly what we need for it 🙌
One quick ask for you:
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey team 😊
Back from holiday! Here's your September report.
Enquiries came in at 24 forms and 22 phone clicks, down from 43 and 29 in August, while visits to the site stayed almost flat. We can't see a cause on our side.
On the good side, more of the people who see you in Google are clicking through (up to 1.22%), and 14 of your 26 tracked searches are on page one 👍
Two quick things for you:
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Hana 😁
We're catching up tomorrow morning, so here are the two reports ahead of that!
We'll chat more tomorrow!
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Anna and Joachim 😁
I'm back! Here's your September report.
Organic search brought in A$3,337 from 22 orders, up from A$1,270 from 13 in August, so more orders and bigger ones 🤩 It's a small base so one month isn't a trend yet, but it's a really good one.
Joachim, the thing you flagged about the growth all coming from the brand has flipped: your collection pages picked up 97 more clicks while the homepage dropped 46 🙌
I promised a before-and-after for Search Console and it's in there: Google showed the site 36.3% more often than this time last year. Does that line up with what you're seeing in Shopify?
And thank you so much for the homework, Anna, it's super thorough! A new site too, yay! 🎉 Here's where that leaves things:
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Cam and Steph 😊
Here's your September report, and sorry it's later than it should have been.
The honest headline is that organic search sales were down: $16,136 in September against $22,746 in August, and down 23% on September last year too. Orders from search went from 144 to 116.
One thing worth knowing: GA4 can't tie about $160K of your September revenue to any channel (35.5% of it), so the organic number is a floor. Fixing that tracking would sharpen every channel decision, ad spend included!
The Google Shopping move is well underway, with session two on the 13th 🍒 I still owe Cam the StoryBank list and Steph the timeline, those are next.
One thing I need from you both:
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Lou 😁
So glad you're happy with the updates! Here's your September report.
The whole site had a big month, up 46% to $63,227, but most of that came from your ads and emails rather than search, so we're not claiming it 😊
Organic search was softer, $3,999 against $4,675 in August. Nothing we've built went live until 6 October, so treat September as your starting line.
Thanks for the big thumbs up on the 51 new titles and descriptions! Alex is loading them now, so they'll be live on the site very soon 🙌
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Bernie and Arlen 😁
Here's your first monthly report, which is your reporting home from now on, with a new tab each month.
September was a migration month, so it's a starting point more than a scorecard. The big find: Search Console was set up on the www version of your site, so it's been recording almost nothing since June.
One quick ask for you:
Next up is rebuilding the titles and descriptions on your roughly 600 products that were lost in the move.
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Mike 😊
Back from holiday, and I wanted to say a proper thank you! Here's your final report, covering September.
Clicks from Google were up 65% on September last year, and "hedge maintenance" holds a top 3 spot across the entire map 🌿 Everything we built is yours to keep.
Is there anything you need from us to hand things over smoothly?
It's been a real pleasure working with you, thank you!
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Therese 😊
Here's your final report, covering September.
Clicks held at 531 even though Google showed the site less often, and 32 of your 37 tracked searches now have an AI answer at the top of the page, which is the likely reason.
You're still on page one for 19 of those 37, with 4 at number 1 🙌 Everything we built is yours to keep.
Anything you need from us before we wrap up? Thanks again for four great years, Therese and Jason!
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Nathan 😊
Here's your September report.
Website clicks from your Google profile hit 126, the first time over 100 in our monthly reports, and search views reached 440, the highest of the 12 windows we've measured! 👍
I'd still really love that quick call to walk you through it and make sure everything goes smoothly. Would Thursday or Friday this week work?
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Angela and Glenn 😊
Here's your first monthly report!! 🎉 Your September report is live and it'll get a new tab every month from here.
Organic clicks hit 2,906, up 28.0% on September last year 🚀 (a touch under August's 3,002) and your average position moved from 14.3 to 13.5, plus visits from AI assistants went from 58 to 110!
Massive thanks for turning the Brand Kit and Entity Pack around so fast, and for getting the Shopify app set up with Alex 🙌 Next up it's technical fixes through that app, your Brand Kit going into Notable and your blog refreshes.
Got 1 quick question for you:
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Ernesto and William 😊
Here's your first monthly report!! 🎉 It sits on your report site as a new tab next to Strategy and Baseline: September report
September was all foundations on our side, your Brand Kit went out on the 3rd (and thanks for turning the feedback around the same day!), we confirmed full access to the site so fixes go straight in with nothing installed, and we checked all 2,186 posts, pages and products against your Entity Pack 💎
Next up is getting those corrections live, review markup so your Google reviews show up in search, and your content strategy and first pieces through Notable 🚀 Have a look and let me know what you think?
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Stephen!! 😁
Here's your first monthly report, your September report! 🎉
Organic search brought in $165,905 from 136 purchases, up from $101,925 in August, and clicks jumped to 6,869 🙌 Nothing we've built is live yet, so September is your starting line!
Got 2 quick questions for you:
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
Hey Debra and Daz 😊
Here's your first monthly report, your September report! September was the last full month before we kicked off this week, so it's your starting line 🚀
Organic search brought in US$1,871 from 16 orders, which is 2.7% of the US$69,724 the store did all up. Google clicks landed at 560 (1,325 this time last year) while impressions climbed 12.9% on August to 39,944 👀
AI assistants sent you 47 visits, up from 27 in August, and that's not counting your ChatGPT ads!
Got 2 quick questions for you:
With Empathy,
Ben 😊
| Decision | What is in front of you |
|---|---|
| DCIS and the offer tab | As above. Nothing goes to Jason until you have called it. |
| The Notable pitch on two accounts | Frontline and Sinclair both close with a Notable callout while their own delivery notes mark that upsell parked, do not push. They are live paying clients so it is not forbidden, and in Sinclair's case it matches what you told Ali in August. Both left in place rather than overridden. |
| Client | Why no September report |
|---|---|
| Absolute Essential | Sprint closed 18 September with its own handover page. No monthly cadence. |
| Clearwater Wildlife Tours | Project shaped, no month-tab cadence. Kim has handed the content back to us and is waiting on your option choice. |
| Oxygen IT | Project complete, nothing recurring. Reconnect open since 10 September. |
| KOOSHOO | No monthly cadence, but fresh data is ready for the call: organic revenue up 17% on 26% more orders from 16% fewer visits, number 1 for "plastic free hair ties" and "biodegradable hair ties", and invisible on every broad category term. That gap is the Content Engine argument. |
| Brandkit | Paused at David's request, September invoice voided. The repeating invoice is still live in Xero and fires 28 October. |
| Flame Grill & Sunfire | Paused since 25 August pending a possible sale. |
| Prime Plumbing | Term ended 4 October. You have already replied in their existing thread. |
| POSrite | Work stopped on your 28 September call. The 35 owed blogs are formally dropped. |
| Item | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| Nature Baby's term | The six-month report was due 7 October and the term ended around 17 October. You extended the engagement at no charge on 1 October, in writing, until the roughly 150 content pieces are loaded. |
| Credentials in a public channel | A SEMrush login and a Wikidata password are sitting in #nature-baby-delivery, flagged 29 September and still not rotated. Nothing leaked into any report file or PDF. |
| Eden's attribution | GA4 cannot credit roughly $2M a year to any channel. It understates the organic figure their guarantee is measured on, and every channel decision they make, ad spend included, runs on partial data. |
| Drop Bear's keyword list | Two spelling pairs are tracked as four separate searches and there is a junk row, so every count built on it needs the same adjustment. Worth de-duplicating before November. |
| Maps window convention | Two conventions are quietly coexisting, which already produced an unreproducible figure on a live page. Worth pinning in the pull script so it cannot drift again. |
| Change | Why |
|---|---|
| Rank checks read the Search Console property | The registry's domain field is the billing domain. Drop Bear's whole check scored the wrong website off it, and nothing warned. |
| Rank checks record their own method | Device, depth and engine are now written into every pack, so next month's comparison knows what it is comparing against. |
| Deploys stage only referenced files | Two client folders each held a copy of our own confidential rate card. One was orphaned and a blanket copy would have published it. |
| Deploys flag missing assets | A whitelist that misses a referenced file ships broken images. Nature Baby's three chart SVGs would have gone silently. |
| Re-pulls preserve enrichment | A re-pull used to wipe a completed rank check. |
| The SOP | clients/MONTHLY-REPORTING-SOP.md now carries the whole run, including the checks that found the most and why a zero-findings QA pass counts as a failed one. |