Impact proof

The idea

Measuring and recommending is not enough — at some point you have to show that the work paid off. Every completed action becomes a dated marker here, and PivotSEO compares the same measurements over two periods of equal length: one just before the date, one just after. This is the page to open when a client asks what their budget produced.

Where the markers come from

• Marking a recommendation as done creates its marker automatically. Unchecking it removes the marker — the log stays an honest record of what was actually done.
• Placing a schema on the site and having it confirmed live (the Schema Injector's « Place on site » tab) creates a marker too.
• The « Add an action » button covers everything else: a page rewrite, a press release, a technical fix, work done outside PivotSEO. Title, date, and an optional detail.
• The date is what matters: it is what separates before from after. A future date is rejected, since it cannot measure anything.
• The trash icon removes an action from the log without touching the work itself.

The five measurements compared

• AI capture rate: the share of queries where your brand comes up, as a percentage.
• GEO score: the average AI visibility score over the period.
• Google clicks: the sum of Search Console clicks.
• Average position: the one measurement where going down is good news — the page treats it accordingly.
• GA4 sessions: the sum of sessions over the period.

Reading a card

• The 30 d / 60 d / 90 d selector changes the width of both compared windows, for every card at once.
• Each row reads « before → after », followed by the gap in absolute value and as a percentage.
• « N-day window incomplete — X more day(s) »: the time simply has not passed yet. Nothing is extrapolated to fill the gap.
• « No measurement available for this period »: scans or Search Console data are needed on both sides of the date.
• The top banner counts actions that are improving, declining and still measuring — and only counts 30-day windows that have genuinely elapsed.

The gap against your sector

An 8% rise means nothing on its own: if the whole sector rose 12% over the same period, you actually lost ground. Each card therefore carries, when the data exists, the movement of your sector's demand over exactly the same dates — measured by Google Trends across the whole category, with no other customer's data involved.

• The green or red "± N pts vs sector" pill is your change minus the market's, in percentage points. That is the number to show: +8% while the sector falls 6% is worth 14 points, not 8.
• On average position, a negative gap is good news: you slipped less than your market.
• The banner at the top names the Google category used as the reference, along with the market. If it doesn't match your business, say so — the comparison is there to be argued with.
• No benchmark, no pill. When the curve lacks weeks on either side of the date, nothing is shown: a gap computed from a single measurement would give a coincidence the appearance of a fact.

What the page does not claim

Even corrected for the sector, the comparison shows a correlation, not proof of causation. Live campaigns, competitors' moves, the news cycle: other factors weigh on the same curves, and the sector gap neutralises only one of them — the season. Present it as a body of evidence, never as a demonstration: that is what makes it credible.