Across the sixteen months we have measured, August 2026 produced more enquiries than any other month: 45 form submissions in total, 21 of them from organic search. Both are records, and the organic figure is up 163% on August last year.
That matters more than any traffic number, because it happened in the quiet season and while search clicks were softening. Fewer visitors, more enquiries.
For context, the previous best month for total submissions was 39 (May and July 2026), and February held the previous organic record at 20.
| Form submissions | Aug 2025 | Feb 2026 | Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 17 | 32 | 45 |
| From organic search | 8 | 20 | 21 |
We measure your Maps visibility across a grid of 169 points spread over your service area, checking where you rank from each one. Here is what changed between June 2025 and now.
| Service | Points where you rank in the top 3 | June 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| hedge maintenance | 168 | |
| tree removal | 1 | |
| arborist | 1 | |
| garden maintenance | 0 | |
| gardener | 0 |
"Hedge maintenance" is total dominance: you are in the top three from every single point on the grid. And "arborist" went from appearing in 3 of the 169 points to appearing in all 169, with 68 of those in the top three.
One that is going the wrong way, so you hear it from us first: "gardening services" has slipped from 18 top-three points at the March baseline to 10 now. It is the only one of the six moving backwards.
Every number traces to a named source: Search Console and GA4 pulled 2 September 2026, your Google Business Profile grid scans, a live Google NZ rankings check the same day, and your SEO Work sheet. Google Business Profile under-reports interactions, so those counts are a floor.
Checked live on Google New Zealand, 2 September 2026. Of the 37 keywords we track, 31 rank in the top 50, 11 are on page one, 8 are in the top three and 5 are at number 1.
| Keyword | Live position |
|---|---|
| hedge cutting | 1 |
| hedge cutting contractors | 1 |
| hedge maintenance service | 1 |
| garden hedge maintenance | 1 |
| tree pruning auckland | 1 |
| garden and tree maintenance | 2 |
| hedge cutting services | 2 |
| hedge maintenance | 2 |
Search clicks peaked at 416 in February and sat at 239 in August, a 43% fall from that peak. Two things explain it, and neither is a ranking problem.
First, winter. Outdoor services soften from May to August in Auckland, which you have described yourself. The like-for-like comparison is the honest one: August 2026 is 61.5% up on August 2025, and every month of the last four is ahead of the same month last year.
Second, and more interesting: Google is showing you more and people are clicking less. Your impressions actually rose 7.5% in August to the highest level since May. Had your click-through rate held at July's level, August would have produced about 266 clicks instead of 239. So the gap is not visibility, it is click-through, which is the signature of Google answering more questions on the results page itself.
| Month | Clicks | Impressions | Click-through rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 2026 | 274 | 43,667 | 0.63% |
| July 2026 | 247 | 41,571 | 0.59% |
| August 2026 | 239 | 44,697 | 0.53% |
The enquiries record in the same month tells you the traffic that does arrive is the right traffic.
| Opportunity | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Your service pages have the demand and not the rank | The four main service pages earned 53,803 impressions across June to August and returned 86 clicks, because none of them rank on page one. "Arborist" alone was shown 4,556 times. Google knows those pages exist and is not ranking them well enough to be clicked. This is the single biggest opportunity on the account. |
| Your blog is carrying the site | Two posts do half of all your search clicks. That proves content works here; it also means the service pages are underperforming by comparison. |
| No FAQ structure anywhere | You have genuinely useful answers on the site, but none of it is marked up in the format Google and AI assistants read for answer boxes. |
| We have lost editing access to the site | Our access to your Webflow site lapsed, which is holding up the quick technical wins. Worth sorting, because several of the items above are small changes. |
| More content, not more links | We are changing how authority gets built: winding down monthly volume link building and putting that effort into content instead. |