RatingPlate: 59% of its Bing AI citations went to the one page I almost left out, through Oct 11, 2026
For homeowners pricing a heat pump water heater in their state.
I named RatingPlate after the metal tag on every water heater, then built the site around state cost guides. The data sent readers straight back to the tag: 59% of the site's AI citations landed on one page, the rating plate guide, and I followed them.
Visit RatingPlate Read the story
7 months in In search since Mar 19, 2026; data through Oct 16, 2026
- First recorded version Mar 12, 2026
- Seen on Google Mar 19, 2026
- Seen on Bing By Mar 27, 2026
- Best month yet Aug 2026, 15 clicks
- Now, 7 months in Sep 2026, 14 Google and Bing clicks
- 864Bing AI citations in September 2026, up 36% on August
- 42 of 1.3KENERGY STAR records passed the publishing check; the rest were too thin to stand behind
EMeasure, then double downIts mascot: Jolteon
A dead water heater and a phone flashlight on the label
The person here is standing at a water heater that just quit, flashlight on the label. Before they can price a heat pump they need to know what they own: the model, the size, the fuel, how old it is. No brand-neutral reference answered that, even though ENERGY STAR publishes clean public data on every certified unit.
I picked the name because the rating plate is the first step before every other question. When my first plan left that page out, I put it back by hand. Then I built the site around something else anyway: state guides, because the money question looked like the bigger search.
Only models with complete, sourced specs get a page
A Python build turns 1.3K ENERGY STAR records into pages but publishes only the 42 with complete, sourced specs (35 of them heat pumps), recounted with the site's own check on Oct 20, 2026. Thin pages would have looked like everyone else's. Every field carries its source and the date it was checked. On the first day I stripped tank sizes from 233 tankless records that have no tank, and specs that belonged to a sibling model.
Then I made the state guides the pillar: electricity rates, rebates and payback for all 51 states, with a transparent score. The rebate claims expire on their own. Once a state's "launched" status is older than 30 days, the page stops calling the program current and says when it was last verified instead.
The data told me which page the site is
Google sent no clicks in a complete month: 0 across the 7 complete months from April to October 2026. Bing did, in small numbers. In September 2026, Bing clicks were about level with August (15 to 14). Bing's AI answers were the surprise. In September 2026, Bing AI citations rose 36% from August (633 to 864).
Bing AI citations up 36% in September, a new best month, and the fifth month in a row it grew.
Data through
- May 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
- June 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
- August 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
- September 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
May 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The May 2026 core update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
June 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The June 2026 spam update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
August 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The August 2026 spam update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
September 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The September 2026 spam update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
HI-SCORE the best month so far
| Month | Bing AI citations | Change from the month before |
|---|---|---|
| April | 23 | first month |
| May | 109 | up 374% |
| June | 162 | up 49% |
| July | 392 | up 142% |
| August | 633 | up 61% |
| September | 864 | up 36% |
Where those citations went is the story. Of the 2.6K citations Bing attributed to a page in the export window ending Oct 11, 2026, 1498 (58.5%) landed on /rating-plate-guide/. The 51 state guides, the pages I had built the site around, drew 190 (7.4%), spread over 25 states. In July 2026 I rebuilt the guide from sourced data it had never rendered: the fields for all four heater types, a full replacement guide, and a grounded FAQ. I can say the citations grew after that; the export windows overlap too much to say the rebuild caused it.
- The rating plate guide
- 59%
- All 51 state guides together
- 7%
The miss is maintenance. The energy prices on the live pages are from January 2026, and every state's rebate status was last verified in March 2026, so the self-downgrade has fired on all of them. It fired unevenly: the New York page says its program status "may have changed" in one card and calls the program active in its FAQ, because the downgrade never reached that surface.
How I measured it. Bing's AI Performance page export lists every cited page for this site (48 of 48), so the shares are exact for that window; Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools daily totals summed by complete month; the publishing check recounted by running the site's own function over its own records. Shares compare pages; they do not prove what made one page win.
RatingPlate's search clicks by month
- September, compared with Augustdown 7%14 search clicks, down from 15
- August, compared with Julyup 25%15 search clicks, up from 12
- Best month on recordAugust15 search clicks
Search clicks about flat in September, down 7% on August, holding near the best month.
Data through
- May 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
- June 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
- August 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
- September 2026, what else happened: 1 search change
May 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The May 2026 core update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
June 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The June 2026 spam update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
August 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The August 2026 spam update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
September 2026: what else happened
- Google, : The September 2026 spam update. Source: Google Search Status Dashboard; my sites' 14 days either side are on the log.
This is what else was going on that month. I list it for context; nothing here shows any of it moved my clicks.
HI-SCORE the best month so far
| Month | Search clicks | Change from the month before |
|---|---|---|
| April | 1 | first month |
| May | 8 | up 700% |
| June | 14 | up 75% |
| July | 12 | down 14% |
| August | 15 | up 25% |
| September | 14 | down 7% |
The numbers, month by monthRatingPlate's search clicks and the changes I made, data through Oct 30, 2026
| Month | Changes made | Bing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2026 | 3 | first month | first month |
| May 2026 | 0 | too few to tell | too few to tell |
| Jun 2026 | 0 | too few to tell | too few to tell |
| Jul 2026 | 3 | too few to tell | too few to tell |
| Aug 2026 | 0 | too few to tell | too few to tell |
| Sep 2026 | 0 | too few to tell | too few to tell |
content technical data other
Next, the label guide goes first
The domain was named for the reader's first question, and the data sent readers back to that page after the plan had moved away from it. The order the data points to is identify first, then decide: the rating plate guide, then the state's math.
Today the stale check prints a warning and softens the copy; it never stops an update, which is how January prices are on the page in October 2026. The next version holds the page back when prices or rebate statuses go stale, and the downgrade reaches every surface that repeats the claim, the FAQ included.
The site's own rating plate, filled in from its data. Two of its fields are past the site's own freshness rules, and that is the miss.
- Label
- Rating plate
- Model
- RatingPlate.com
- Mfd.
- Mar 2026first commit
- Source
- ENERGY STAR certified models
- Rated
- 42 of 1.3K recordspassed the publish gate, Oct 20, 2026
- Bing index
- 3 to 103 pagesMar 28 to Oct 16, 2026
- AI citations
- 59% to one pagethe rating plate guide, Bing's export window ending Oct 11, 2026
- Energy prices
- Jan 2026 Stale9 months old on Oct 20, 2026; its own rule calls 3 months stale
- Rebates verified
- Mar 12 to Mar 26, 2026 Staleall 51; the newest was 208 days old on Oct 20, 2026, its own limit is 30 days
Now
A status over 30 days old softens its own wording on the page
Gap
It only warns me and never holds a page back; the FAQ keeps the old claim
Next
Stale prices or statuses stop the update, and every surface reads one field
Where these numbers come from
- Decision
- Show when the rebate status was last verified.
- Visible proof
- The New York rebate card warns that its March 12, 2026 status may have changed.
- Limit
- The FAQ still calls the program active. This card does not correct the whole page.
Captured at phone width on . The live page may have changed.
Check the current page
The category pages also raise a practical budget question: does getting more impressions justify building more of them? Compare RatingPlate’s page and query evidence in the lesson.