Across the nine accounts we manage directly, total organic impressions have been broadly flat this year. Click-through rate has not. The queries that still convert have grown longer, more specific and noticeably more comparative.

What we are seeing

• Head terms lose clicks first, and lose them to summaries rather than to competitors.
• Comparison and “versus” queries convert at roughly twice the rate they did eighteen months ago.
• Pages answering a specific operational question outperform pages describing a category.

What we changed in response

We stopped briefing category overviews. Every new brief now names one decision the reader is trying to make, and the piece is judged on whether it settles that decision — not on how comprehensively it covers the topic.

What we have not changed

Technical health, internal linking and page speed still decide whether any of this gets read. The fundamentals did not shift; the content brief did.