This page is the record of the work, from April 2024 through to the end of September 2026. Enquiries are the right place to start, because they are the number that pays the bills.
August 2026 is the highest enquiry month in the series we hold: 45 form submissions in total, 21 of them from organic search, and the organic figure was up 163% on August last year. It happened in the quiet season and while search clicks were softening, which is the combination you want. Fewer visitors, more enquiries.
The trend underneath it matters more than any single month. Your Results sheet averaged 19.8 enquiries a month through the second half of 2025 and 31.6 a month from January to July 2026, a lift of 59.2%, with 39 the best month in the 13 months that sheet covers.
The 45 is GA4's count of quote-form submissions, read live on 2 September 2026, and it is the last enquiry reading in this record; there is no September figure. Your site records that form twice in Google Analytics, once directly and once through Tag Manager, so the two events of 45 are the same 45 submissions rather than 90. The longest enquiry history we hold is your Results sheet, 13 months from July 2025 to July 2026, which counts total enquiries and tops out at 39; it goes no further, so its remaining columns need filling in from your own Analytics. The 21 from organic, the 8 for August 2025 and February 2026's previous organic best of 20 were all read from GA4 on 2 September 2026.
| 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 the March 2026 baseline, the earliest point in this scan series, and the final scan, taken on 1 October 2026.
| Service | Points where you rank in the top 3 | March 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| hedge maintenance | 168 | |
| tree removal | 63 | |
| arborist | 45 | |
| garden maintenance | 39 | |
| gardener | 27 |
"Hedge maintenance" is total dominance: top three from every single point on the grid, and the worst position anywhere on it is third. "Arborist" went from 45 top-three points in March to 62, and "tree removal" from 63 to 77. Across all six services, 405 of the 1,014 points sit in the top three against 360 at the March 2026 baseline, at an average position of 6.7 against 7.6.
Two to be straight about. "Gardening services" has slipped from 18 top-three points in March to 10, the only one of the six going backwards. And "arborist" read 68 on the 2 September scan against 62 on the final one, so it has eased off its peak while still sitting well ahead of the March baseline. Google Business Profile under-reports interactions, so every Maps count here is a floor.
Every number traces to a named source: Search Console read 12 October 2026, your Google Business Profile including the 169-point grid scan of 1 October 2026, the live Google NZ rankings check of 2 September 2026, your Results sheet to July 2026, and GA4 as last read on 2 September 2026. Google Business Profile under-reports interactions, so those counts are a floor.
This was the last live rankings check we ran, on Google New Zealand on 2 September 2026. Of the 37 keywords tracked then, 31 ranked in the top 50, 11 were on page one, 8 were in the top three and 5 were at number 1. The Maps grid above is the only position reading taken after it, on 1 October 2026.
| 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 2026 and finished at 226 in September, 46% below 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: September 2026 came in 65.0% ahead of September 2025, 226 clicks against 137, on 16.1% more appearances. You finished being shown more often and chosen more often than a year earlier.
Second, Google trimmed how often it showed you. September's impressions fell 31.5% on August, to 31,961 from 46,643. What held up against that is the share of people who click after seeing you: it recovered to 0.71% in September from 0.53% in August, against 0.50% in September last year. So impressions dropped by nearly a third while clicks eased only 7.8%, because the appearances that remained were better matched to what those people wanted. An appearance nobody clicks is worth nothing.
| Month | Clicks | Impressions | Click-through rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 2025 | 137 | 27,523 | 0.50% |
| August 2026 | 245 | 46,643 | 0.53% |
| September 2026 | 226 | 31,961 | 0.71% |
The 416 is February 2026, and it is the highest month of the 17 Search Console holds for this property, which start in May 2025; read 12 October 2026. Google has since restated August slightly upward as its data settled, to 245 clicks and 46,643 appearances, against the 239 and 44,697 shown on the August tab. The figures above are the restated ones.
| Where it stands | What it means |
|---|---|
| Your service pages have the demand and not the rank | In September the hedge cutting page was shown 3,392 times for 6 clicks and the tree pruning page 2,683 times for 5, which is 11 clicks from the two of them. Google puts those pages in front of people searching for exactly what you sell, just not high enough to be clicked. It is the clearest piece of value left on the site. |
| Your blog is carrying the site | "When to trim hedges in NZ" and "Complete guide to tree removal in NZ" took 119 of September's 226 clicks, 53% of everything, from two pages. Content clearly works here, and the service pages sit a long way behind the blog. |
| No FAQ structure anywhere | You have genuinely useful answers on the site, and none of it is marked up in the format Google and AI assistants read for answer boxes. Of the six services we scan, only "hedge maintenance" gets named in an AI answer at all. |
| Nobody can currently edit the website | Editing access to the Webflow site lapsed and was never restored, which held up several of the small technical items above. Whoever works on the site next will want that sorted first. |
| Authority sits on content rather than link volume | Monthly volume link building was wound down and that effort went into content instead. The domain carries 517 referring domains and 1,311 backlinks, at an Ahrefs domain rating of 9. |