The situation
I started Lukes & Lukes in 2026 to appraise machinery and equipment. The website started from nothing on May 31, 2026. A new firm on a new domain has no search history at all. And some of the questions buyers ask most, like how long an appraisal takes, show zero Google searches: people ask them in AI assistants and on the phone instead.
What I did
- Built the brand: the identity, the voice, and how the firm explains what it does.
- Built the site and wrote the service and answer pages around the questions lenders and owners ask.
- Recorded every week how often Bing's and Google's AI answers cited or showed the site.
- Logged every content change and judged it against the numbers after 14 days.
- Checked each idea against real search demand before building it. State-by-state pages measured 30 searches a month across ten phrasings, so I did not build them.
What changed
The first call came in within 90 days of forming the LLC.
- Bing Copilot citations, 90 days: 835 on September 16, about 2,000 on October 18, about 2,100 on October 23.
- Google AI impressions, 90 days: 689 on September 16, 1,366 on October 18, about 1,450 on October 23.
- Google search: 24 clicks and 3,788 impressions in the 28 days to August 13, and 50 clicks and 5,684 impressions in the 28 days to October 18. Over the three months to October 21: 134 clicks and about 15,300 impressions.
- Visitors: about 1,000 people since the site went live in June, by Google Analytics.
What it says about working with me
I test the work on my own company first, I measure it every week, and I skip the ideas the numbers do not support.
