The client ranked where it needed to and watched click-through decay anyway. AI Overviews had started answering the informational queries that feed its commercial pages. Across its top 50 commercial queries, the client’s pages showed up in AI Overview responses exactly four times. The query spaces its category position should have owned were getting explained to its buyers by manufacturers instead.
Anonymized · NDA
4 to 34 AI Overview citations in six months.One Standard retainer.
A mid-market automation distributor with ~12K SKUs was ranking well and still bleeding organic share, because AI Overviews were eating the click-through on informational queries. Six months on the Standard editorial retainer took its AI Overview citations on the top 50 commercial queries from 4 to 34. Organic leads from informational pages doubled.
- Client
- Industrial automation distributor
- Scale
- ~12K SKUs
- Services
- Editorial Authority
- Engagement
- 2025 · 6 months
4 → 34
AI Overview citations on the top 50 commercial queries
×8.5
Citation-count lift over the six-month window
2×
Organic leads from informational pages
8 + 1
Pieces and pillars shipped per month — Standard retainer
The situation
Where they started.
The constraint
What made it hard.
The catalog was already in order. The gap was authority content, and the budget covered one retainer tier, not a content-team buildout. So the plan had to be narrow: 8 pieces and 1 pillar a month, on three product categories, written by senior subject-matter writers. Spread thin across the whole catalog, it would have moved nothing.
What we ran
The work, phase by phase. What shipped, and when.
Months 1–6
Editorial retainer, Standard tier
8 pieces + 1 pillar per month for six months, concentrated on three product categories instead of scattered across the site.
Months 1–4
Pillar + cluster architecture
Each category got a pillar built to be the citable explainer for its query space, with cluster pieces answering the long-tail engineering questions around it.
Bi-weekly
Citation tracking from week one
AI Overview citation count on the top 50 commercial queries probed bi-weekly, so the content plan followed what engines actually started citing rather than an editorial calendar set in advance.
This is what a Editorial Authority engagement at this scale looks like in practice.
Why it worked
The mechanism. What actually moved the number.
AI Overviews build answers from whatever looks like the category authority — depth, internal coherence, structure a machine can parse. Six months of senior writing aimed at three categories made the client the densest source available in those query spaces.
Citations compound. Once the pillars started getting cited, the cluster pieces around them came along. The engine had already decided the domain was the authority for that territory.
What happened
The results. As measured, dips included.
Citations on the tracked query set went from 4 to 34 over six months, a ×8.5 lift. Organic leads from informational pages doubled in the same window.
The pillar pages now sit at the top of AI Overview responses for terms the manufacturers used to own.
The number that mattered
×8.5
AI Overview citation count, top 50 commercial queries
4 → 34 citations · 6-month engagement
Measurement notes
How these numbers were measured.
A metric without a source is an assertion. Every number on this page is listed below with how it was counted.
- AIO citations (4 → 34)
- Citation count on the client’s top 50 commercial queries, probed bi-weekly via the Salesolution citation tracker. Baseline established four weeks pre-engagement; the closing figure is the 24-week mark.
- Organic leads from informational pages (2×)
- Lead-form submissions landing on informational pages, in the client’s analytics, compared against the pre-engagement baseline window.
- Retainer scope
- Standard editorial retainer: 8 pieces + 1 pillar per month across three product categories, senior subject-matter writers, no LLM ghostwriting.
Anonymity. Client name withheld under NDA. Most industrial distributors prefer the case study without the logo. The vertical, scale, timeline, and every number are exactly as measured. Only the identifying details are removed. Reference calls available on request.
More case studies
Other distributors. Same standard of proof.
Industrial hydraulics distributor~8,500 SKUs
Anonymized · NDA+43.5%
Qualified leads per month, on the August baseline
Aug 2024 – Jan 2025 · client CRM
1,840 to 2,640 qualified leads a month. No new ad spend.
An ~8,500-SKU hydraulics distributor was stuck at 1,840 qualified inbounds a month. AI Overviews were citing its manufacturers, not its own category pages. Six months of catalog and AI-search work later, January closed at 2,640. That’s +43.5% over the August baseline, and we didn’t add a dollar of ad spend.
Catalog AIAI Search & GEOAug 2024 – Jan 2025Full engagement
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Named · with consent+43.5%
Qualified leads a month, across the full engagement
2022 – 2025 · client CRM
1,840 to 2,640 qualified leads a month. The full-stack rebuild behind it.
Northern Hydraulics is an industrial hydraulics distributor — ~8,500 SKUs of JIC/NPT fittings, adapters, and assemblies sold to engineers and MRO buyers. Over a three-year relationship (2022–2025) we ran the whole growth function: brand and design, a Magento 1 to headless replatform, AI-search and technical SEO, an AI-assisted catalog rewrite, pillar content, paid ads, and cold outbound. Qualified leads went from 1,840 to 2,640 a month, up 43.5%.
Full Growth OwnershipWebsite DevelopmentAI Search & GEOEditorial AuthorityOutbound Email2022 – 2025Industrial hydraulics distributor~8,500 SKUs
Named · with consent8,500
SKUs replatformed off Magento 1
6 months · schema-complete from day one
8,500 SKUs off Magento 1, onto a storefront AI can read.
Northern Hydraulics ran an 8,500-SKU catalog on Magento 1, which hit end-of-life with no security patches and product markup AI search engines couldn't parse. Over 6 months we replatformed the whole catalog to a headless Next.js storefront on Shopify Hydrogen, schema-complete from day one, and carried the JIC/NPT spec quote flow across intact. Mobile category-browse INP dropped from 600ms+ to under 200ms. This was the web-dev cut of the full engagement; the qualified-lead growth is reported on the anchor study.
Website DevelopmentAI Search & GEO2022
Your catalog, same standard
Want a number like these for your catalog?
Held to the same standard as the studies above: we measure where you stand today — organic and AI-search visibility across your top categories — and show you the baseline before we propose a thing.