Case study · One of my own sites
The Crawler's Cookbook: a page built before the answer existed
Fans wanted a release date. There wasn't one. The page I built for that question drew 43% of this site's Google clicks from July 11 to October 8, 2026.
- 43%of the site's Google clicks went to the Book 9 page, Jul 11 to Oct 8
- 14.9Ksearch clicks in September, Google and Bing, up 41% on August
- 92 daysin a row with 100+ Google clicks, and counting
The whole site, month by month
The last 28 days for The Crawler's Cookbook: growing on Google, fell on Bing. Google +20%, Bing -21%.
- September vs August+41%14.9K search clicks, from 10.6K
- Last 28 days vs the 28 before+16%14.4K search clicks, from 12.4K
- Jul to Sep vs Apr to Jun+987%32.2K search clicks, from 3K
- 119Apr
- 989May
- 1.9KJun
- 6.6KJul
- 10.6KAug
- 14.9KSep
A fan needed a straight answer
Book 9 had attention before it had a release date. A page pretending to know the date would have been easy to write and wrong to publish. I gave the question its own place on the site while the honest answer was still "not announced."
That page could keep track of what had been confirmed and what remained a guess. The point was keeping the two apart, not guessing the date.
The answer where a reader looks first
I published the Book 9 page on July 11 and kept the short answer visible as the story changed. The page links readers to the underlying reporting and separates confirmed information from speculation, so someone arriving from search leaves with a real answer, even when the answer is incomplete.
The principle I carry to any subject: when people ask a specific question before anyone can answer it fully, a useful page can still explain what is known, what is missing, and when it was last checked.
It became a major way into the site
From July 11 through October 8, the Book 9 page received 13.8K Google clicks: 43% of the site's 32.1K over the same 90 days. Readers didn't just read and leave: on phones, the one-tap reader poll under the answer drew more taps than any link on the page.
How I measured it. I added up the Google clicks for every day from July 11 to October 8, 2026, once for the whole site and once for the Book 9 page, from Google Search Console daily and page export. The month-by-month report above is the whole site, there for context; it doesn't isolate this page's effect.
I still made the answer too certain once
A later source check found an overclaim in the Book 9 material. I corrected it on August 2 and tightened the check around the page. A dated page is useful only when its language stays as careful as its sources.
Demand for the next book was growing on its own. The narrow claim I can support is that this page earned visits and a large share of the site's Google clicks. I can't claim it created the demand.
The evidence
Heatmap, The Crawler's Cookbook
People came for a release date and stayed to vote
9K page views, 3.3K taps on phones, last 30 days
On the Book 9 page, the three answers to a one-tap reader poll drew 745 of 3.3K taps, 22%, more than any link on the page. The page answers the question first; the poll gives a reader with no date something to do next.
The poll says nobody has answered yet in this single page capture. The 745 taps come from Clarity's 30-day element totals, not the poll message in the image.
Microsoft Clarity tap heatmap, /books/the-beautiful-place/, captured 2026-10-12
Receipt · The Crawler's Cookbook
Receipt · The Crawler's Cookbook
