From a new domain to 19 400 Google impressions in its second month.
Case study · Published 13 October 2026
Visit Citrusdal is an independent tourism guide that Telos built from nothing and still runs. It went live on 1 August 2026. In September, its second month, Google showed it 19 400 times and 257 people clicked through. By 11 October, Microsoft Copilot was citing it in 42% of its answers about Citrusdal. Here is what we did, week by week, and what the same work does for a guest house.
- Built and run by
- Telos, as its own project (not a client)
- Live since
- 1 August 2026
- What it is
- A tourism guide: places to stay, eat and visit, with 61 businesses listed
The numbers.
- Times Google showed it, September
- 19 400
- People who clicked through
- 257
- Copilot answers about the town that cite it
- 42%
- Growth: about 195 Google impressions a day on 31 August; 500 to 900 a day by early October. In the 28 days to 6 October: 18 186 impressions and 242 clicks, with the average position improving from 7.8 to 6.7.
- New pages in search: 15 pages appeared in Google for the first time in September.
- AI answers: in Bing's AI citation report, Copilot had cited the site 853 times, in 42% of its answers about "citrusdal", and Bing ranked it 2.8 for that search.
- Visitors from ChatGPT: chatgpt.com sent 10% of the site's page views in its first two weeks of measuring (746 page views, 24 September to 8 October).
What it did for the businesses listed.
A guide only matters if it sends people on. Two figures from the site's own analytics, which count taps without cookies:
- On the accommodation page, 42% of page views ended in a tap through to a place to stay's own website.
- The Baths, a hot-springs resort, got 12 visits to its website and 3 to its booking page from the guide in two weeks.
We can see a tap leave the guide; we cannot see what happened after it. These are visits, not confirmed bookings.
What we did, week by week.
- 1 AugustLaunched with every page in plain HTML that crawlers can read, structured data describing the town and the site, and search and AI crawlers named and welcomed in robots.txt.
- 2 AugustRebuilt the layout for phones first, and added a list of local businesses.
- 13 AugustAdded pages for what the valley is actually searched for: places to eat, camping and the warm baths.
- 17 to 29 AugustPublished The Baths' rates, added dozens of local businesses, checked six listings against the businesses' own websites and corrected them, and cut 1.4 MB from what a phone downloads first.
- 31 AugustFirst read of Search Console: about 195 impressions a day. Two pages were competing for the same hot-springs searches, so one stepped aside.
- SeptemberNew pages for fishing, stargazing, day trips, international visitors, the blossom season and 41 hiking routes, each built only from sourced facts. Added a community noticeboard and the site's own analytics.
- 1 to 8 OctoberTurned the local list into a directory with trading hours, each from the business's own source; rebuilt the wine page; replaced stock photos with owners' own, with permission; retitled the accommodation page for hotel searches; added an About page saying who runs the site.
- 11 OctoberBing showed Copilot citing the producer pages but nobody clicking, so each got a sourced story and answers to the questions people ask.
That is 132 changes in ten weeks. The site was never finished; it was looked after.
The three things that moved it.
1. Answer what people actually search
Search Console showed people asking for hot-spring prices, places to stay and where to eat. The pages that grew were the ones that answered those questions in plain words, with prices and hours in the text.
2. Only facts that can be checked
Every listing was checked against the business's own website or a government page, with the date it was checked. Nothing was invented, not even a rating. That is what lets Google trust a page, and what an AI assistant can safely repeat.
3. Keep working on it
Most websites are built once and left. This one was read against its own data every few weeks and improved where the data pointed.
What this means for a guest house.
Your website does the same job for one business. Guests search, ask an AI assistant, or find you on a booking platform and then look you up. What wins the booking is the same work:
- Your rooms, rates and what is included, in plain text that Google and assistants can read.
- Answers to the questions guests ask before they book: directions, pets, children, what is nearby.
- A Google Business Profile with real reviews, and your details the same everywhere they appear.
- A booking or enquiry route with fewer taps than going back to the app, so the booking is yours, not the platform's.
How we build websites for guest houses
What this case study is not.
- It is not a client result. Visit Citrusdal is our own guide.
- A guide to a whole town has more to rank for than a single business, so a guest house should expect smaller numbers, about its own bookings.
- Impressions and visits are not bookings. We report what we can measure, and say where the measuring stops.
Questions.
Is Visit Citrusdal a Telos client?
No. Visit Citrusdal is an independent tourism guide that Telos built and runs itself, as its own project. That is why we can publish its numbers: they are ours to share. Client sites appear in our work reel, but we do not publish a client's figures without their permission.
Can the same work get my guest house found?
The same methods, yes: answer the questions guests actually search, state your rates and facts plainly, keep every detail correct, and make the site fast on a phone. A guide covering a whole town has more to rank for than one guest house, so your numbers will be smaller, but they will be about your own bookings. We show you your homepage before you pay anything.
How long did it take to see results?
The site went live on 1 August 2026. By 31 August Google was showing it about 195 times a day; by early October, 500 to 900 times a day. Search results move over weeks and months, not days, so we judge the work at 90 days.
What does an impression mean?
An impression is one time Google showed a link to the site in someone's search results. A click is someone choosing it. Impressions show that Google trusts the page for a search; clicks show the listing was worth choosing.
How does your site compare?
The free check tests your website for the things that held most sites back here: no description for Google, no business details for AI assistants, slow on a phone. About ten seconds.
Sources
- Google Search Console, visitcitrusdal.com: the September 2026 monthly summary; the 28-day export to 6 October 2026; the 24-hour export of 31 August 2026.
- Bing Webmaster Tools, keyword and AI citation reports, read 11 October 2026.
- Visit Citrusdal's own cookieless analytics, 24 September to 8 October 2026.
- The Visit Citrusdal project history, 1 August to 11 October 2026.