Month five was a quiet month for new work and a useful one for data. Searches for web hosting in Cumbria now average a position in the top five, “Cumbria SEO” averages page two, and the AEO score reached 87. It also needs a correction to last month’s diary, and some care in how this month’s click numbers are read.
| # | Post | Date | Key metric |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Building a Website That Ranks — SEO Diary 1 | 6 May 2026 | Baseline established |
| 2 | Building a Website That Ranks — SEO Diary 2 | 5 June 2026 | 2,260 impressions, AEO 38 → 70 |
| 3 | Building a Website That Ranks — SEO Diary 3 | 4 July 2026 | AEO 70 → 88, SEO page converting clicks |
| 4 | Building a Website That Ranks — SEO Diary 4 | 7 August 2026 | Average position 41.4 → 25.6, AEO 88 → 81 |
| 5 | Building a Website That Ranks — SEO Diary 5 | 5 September 2026 | Named in an AI Overview, AEO 81 → 85 |
| 6 | Building a Website That Ranks — SEO Diary 6 | 3 October 2026 | Hosting searches in the top five, AEO 85 → 87 |
For reference, the launch post explains the plan in full.
A correction on the AI Overview
Last month’s diary reported 1418 being named in a Google AI Overview for “Cumbria SEO”. That result is location specific. The same search shows the citation when run from outside the UK, but not from the UK, where the overview lists other local providers and does not name 1418.
Both results are real, but only one of them is the one a Cumbria business cares about, so the citation should have been reported with its location last month. The generative AI report points the same way, with only 26 of its 97 impressions this month coming from the UK.
The ordinary results look better. In a normal browser 1418 appears fourth on the first page, though a site you visit often can be flattered there. In a private window it is the second result on page two, which is the more reliable spot check.
Hosting searches reach the top five
Two searches stand out in this month’s Search Console data. “web hosting cumbria” averaged position 4.6 across 93 impressions, and “website hosting cumbria” averaged 3.2 across 46.
On 7 September the hosting and email page was rewritten to include pricing and simpler language for readers who are not technical. Around the same time the keyword tool showed the homepage ranking at position 16 for the first of those searches, which was the wrong page for the term. The site wide average position improved on the day of the rewrite, from 17.2 on the 6th to 9.0 on the 7th.
The timing fits, but it does not prove the rewrite caused the move. The data also cannot show whether the hosting page or the homepage is the one ranking, and that matters because each page is meant to own its own terms. Both average between 5 and 8 across roughly 150 impressions each, so either is possible. Those two searches produced 139 impressions and no clicks, so the visibility has not yet turned into visits.
Search Console: month five
4 clicks, 854 impressions, average position 14. On 24 September Google split Web searches in Search Console into text based and multimodal, where multimodal covers searches that start from an image. It recorded one impression for 1418 this month, so the figures here compare fairly with earlier months.
Impressions fell from 1.41K to 854, and most of that is one page. The SEO and AEO page dropped from 1,015 impressions to 298 and website maintenance from 74 to 8, while the newer posts won some back. Average position improved from 22.6 to 14, but the average hides a swing. It sat around 9 from 7 to 12 September and had drifted to 25.6 by the 29th. An average moves when the mix of impressions changes, so it should not be read as the site climbing.
The clicks need care. Two of the four came from people searching for the referrer spam domain covered in last month’s diary, and only one of the four came from the UK. Last month’s post names that domain, and it now ranks between position 1 and 5 for searches for it, which account for about 76 impressions. Those searchers are people checking their own analytics, not likely clients. It most likely explains why that post sits at position 3.97 on 130 impressions and drew three of the month’s four clicks.
The searches that matter look like this:
| Search | Impressions | Average position |
|---|---|---|
| cumbria seo | 129 | 16.0 |
| search engine optimisation cumbria | 55 | 22.4 |
| web hosting cumbria | 93 | 4.6 |
| website hosting cumbria | 46 | 3.2 |
“Cumbria SEO” is on page two, up from page three in July, though it has not produced a click yet. The spelling variants sit a little further back. The newer posts are surfacing too. The redesign post had 33 impressions in its first four days.
Generative AI report
The generative AI report recorded 97 impressions, up from 42 last month, and the mix flipped. The month four diary accounted for 69 of them, while the service pages together fell from 40 to 20. That is probably the same effect as above, since a search about the spam domain could trigger a generated answer that cites the one post explaining it. The report does not show queries, so that is an inference.
The UK supplied 26 impressions and Japan 21. After 23 September the daily figure dropped from about three to under one. The multimodal filter shows nothing for this report, so that is not the cause, and it is not yet clear what is.
Google Analytics: a cleaner picture
GA4 recorded 61 active users for September, all of them new, with average engagement time up from 5 seconds to 14. The domain flagged last month no longer appears in the top sources.
The older warning signs have not gone. 55 of the 61 users arrived as direct traffic, and the homepage carries 44 of them with an 80% bounce rate, the same pattern as the last two months. The blog pages look more like real readers, with bounce rates between 29% and 50%.
Two things add some confidence. Google organic shows 4 users, matching the 4 clicks in Search Console. And one user arrived from a client website, most likely through the “Made by 1418” footer link. A second referral from an unfamiliar domain is being treated with caution. The user total stays unreliable until the traffic mix settles.
Site Health and AEO score
| Baseline (May 4) | Month 1 (Jun 3) | Month 2 (Jul 3) | Month 3 (Aug 3) | Month 4 (Sep 3) | Month 5 (Oct 3) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site Health | 86 (B) | 100 (A) | 100 (A) | 100 (A) | 100 (A) | 100 (A) |
| AEO Score | 38 (F) | 70 (C) | 88 (B) | 81 (B) | 85 (B) | 87 (B) |
The AEO score rose from 85 to 87, one point short of July’s peak of 88. Warnings fell from 12 to 5 even though the crawl grew from 22 pages to 25. Overlong metadata is one of the things the tool flags, so the most likely cause is the clean up on 7 September, when five meta descriptions and three meta titles that were too long were shortened.
September’s work, briefly
September was light on site work, with most of the time going into the AEO tool itself.
- September 5. Month four diary published and submitted in Search Console.
- September 7. Five meta descriptions and three meta titles shortened, and the hosting and email page rewritten with pricing and simpler language.
- September 12. Signs your website needs attention published and submitted.
- September 26. Redesign or refresh published and submitted.
What month six looks like
Priorities for October: finding out which page ranks for the hosting searches, and filtering the spam domain searches out of the Search Console numbers so they stop distorting position and clicks. The late month slide in average position needs watching to see whether it recovers. The AI Overview will be checked from the UK again, and the remaining five AEO warnings worked through.
The next update will be at the start of November with October’s data.
1418 builds and looks after websites for businesses in Cumbria, from web design through to website maintenance, with SEO, hosting and email support alongside.