What’s The Damage: zero to 14,211 users a month with programmatic SEO
An independent Australian trade-pricing site, launched on 23 February 2026, that we built and optimise. It now covers 86 trades and services across 17 cities on 3,450 pages, and it is measured against Google every week. The live panel updates itself.
- Site build + ongoing SEO
- whatsthedamage.com.au
- 410searches on page 1 of Google
- 72at #1 on Google
- 471cited in AI Overviews
- 969searches tracked weekly
Google Australia, signed out, checked every Monday. Every ranking →
- Launched23 February 2026
- Pages3,450
- Coverage86 trades × 17 cities
- Our roleBuilt & optimised
Eight months after launch
- 4.18MGoogle impressionssince the 23 February 2026 launch, with 37.3K clicks
- 1.02Mimpressions a monthin the last 28 days, with 9.34K clicks
- 14,211usersthe month to 26 October 2026
- 18,554sessionssame period
- 62%from organic search8,835 users arrived from Google
- 544sessions from AI assistantsChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and others
Search appearances, first five months
From 6,900 appearances in its first month to 600,136 in July: growth that compounds as pages earn trust.
| Feb | 6,900 |
|---|---|
| Mar | 76,610 |
| Apr | 103,092 |
| May | 206,000 |
| Jun | 405,502 |
| Jul | 600,136 |
Where 14,211 users came from
The month to 26 October 2026, by first channel (GA4).
- Organic search 8,835 62%
- Direct 2,822 20%
- Email 1,276 9%
- SMS 782 6%
- AI assistants 412 3%
- Other 84
Sources: Google Search Console (impressions and clicks, web search) and Google Analytics 4 (users, sessions, channels: the month to 26 October 2026). Live Google and AI Overview positions are in the table further down.
A crowded market with a trust problem
Australian trade pricing was already owned by marketplaces with a decade of domain authority: Oneflare, hipages, Airtasker, ServiceSeeking. Most new cost-guide sites were lead-generation funnels in disguise, or thin pages with one paragraph per service and nothing specific to the city.
The opening was an independent site that shows its working: no employed tradies, no commercial ties to providers, just cross-referenced pricing with its sources published. The hard part was doing it at programmatic scale without tripping Google’s experience, expertise, authority and trust thresholds, and without spending months hand-writing city pages.
Trust first, scale second, tools third
The order was the safeguard. Every page could point to a published basis for its figures from the day it was indexed.
Methodology first
A public methodology page with 90+ documented sources, built before a single cost page.
Trade marketplaces, industry bodies (Master Plumbers, HIA, Master Builders) and government data (ABS, Fair Work, state regulators), plus the city-modifier logic and a monthly review cadence. Read it →
One structured data spine
Every price on the site comes from one pricing master, so a correction lands everywhere at once.
Trades, city multipliers, units and sources live in one dataset. Pages are generated from it, never edited by hand, which keeps 3,450 pages consistent.
Programmatic city pages
86 trades and services × 17 cities = 1,468 trade-by-city cost pages.
Each page cites city-specific pricing and its sources, with national pillar guides above them and comparison pages beside them.
Tools people use
19 calculators and a free Quote Checker turn a reference site into one homeowners come back to.
Homeowners paste a quote and see how it compares. The annual State of Australian Tradie Pricing report earns links from consumer and property media.
Built to be cited by AI
Structured, sourced pricing is exactly what AI answers quote.
Clean markup, FAQ structure and llms.txt files mean Google’s AI Overviews and assistants like ChatGPT draw on the site. See the live citation count below.
A business, not just traffic
Homeowners request quotes; an SMS assistant checks each job before a tradie sees it.
Tradies take an exclusive territory from $250 a month, or pay per lead from $25. That is the model we build for clients who want SEO to pay its own way.
How the curve was built
- Launch from a zero baseMethodology, data spine and the first programmatic pages go live.
- 76,610 Google appearancesPages start appearing for trade and city pricing searches within weeks.
- 600,136 appearances in 29 daysUp from 6,900 in February.
- 700K impressions, 8,500 usersCumulative since launch, as first published in this case study.
- 4.18M Google impressions since launch37.3K clicks in total; 1.02M impressions in the last 28 days.
- 14,211 users in a single month18,554 sessions; 62% of users from organic search.
The same playbook, on your site
For a business considering programmatic SEO where trust is scrutinised, What’s The Damage is the reference for the order of operations:
- Build the methodology and the trust spine first.
- Generate the pages from a structured data source second.
- Add tools that earn engagement and links third.
The figures come straight from the site’s Google Analytics and Search Console, and the rankings below are checked every week rather than quoted at their best.
Where What’s The Damage ranks this week
These are the trade and city pricing searches the site is measured on every week. The table updates itself from the weekly check, so it shows where the pages rank now, not at their best.
- 410search terms on page 1 of Google
- 72at #1 on Google
- 471cited in Google AI Overviews
- 969trade and city terms tracked
| Search term | Google position | AI Overview | Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| air conditioning cost sunshine coast | #1 | Cited | Air conditioning, Sunshine Coast |
| bricklaying cost adelaide | #1 | Cited | Bricklaying, Adelaide |
| commercial air conditioning cost sunshine coast | #1 | Cited | Commercial air conditioning, Sunshine Coast |
| commercial cleaning cost geelong | #1 | Cited | Commercial cleaning, Geelong |
| commercial electrician cost adelaide | #1 | Cited | Commercial electrician, Adelaide |
| commercial fitout cost cairns | #1 | Cited | Commercial fitout, Cairns |
| commercial flooring cost hobart | #1 | Cited | Commercial flooring, Hobart |
| commercial painting cost geelong | #1 | Cited | Commercial painting, Geelong |
| commercial plumbing cost adelaide | #1 | Cited | Commercial plumbing, Adelaide |
| commercial roofing cost canberra | #1 | Cited | Commercial roofing, Canberra |
| commercial security cost byron bay | #1 | Cited | Commercial security, Byron Bay |
| electrician cost hobart | #1 | Cited | Electrician, Hobart |
| fencing cost byron bay | #1 | Cited | Fencing, Byron Bay |
| fire safety compliance cost canberra | #1 | Cited | Fire safety compliance, Canberra |
| glazier cost cairns | #1 | Cited | Glazier, Cairns |
| handyman cost darwin | #1 | Cited | Handyman, Darwin |
| hot water system cost byron bay | #1 | Cited | Hot water system, Byron Bay |
| landscaping cost wollongong | #1 | Cited | Landscaping, Wollongong |
| line marking cost geelong | #1 | Cited | Line marking, Geelong |
| patio cost adelaide | #1 | Cited | Patio, Adelaide |
Plus 529 more search terms on page 1 or cited in AI Overviews.
Checked automatically every week on Google Australia (google.com.au), signed out, with the DataForSEO SERP API. Positions are organic results; an AI Overview citation means Google linked to the page in its AI answer. A result older than 15 days is removed automatically, so everything shown here was observed in the last two weeks.
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