What a search position is actually worth
Where the Animal Searches Go, and Where the Clicks Come From
In just over twelve months, these sites were shown 207,670 times on searches that read like someone hiring for animal work. More than a third of those sat below position 30, and they produced fourteen clicks between them.
Get This Report for Your SiteSee What It Costs
Rather write it out? Send a note
Start With the Table
From Sept. 13, 2025 through Sept. 16, 2026, six pest control websites were shown 207,670 times for animal control searches. Every one of those searches was classified as someone wanting the problem solved, not reading about it.
Here's every one of those searches, sorted by the average position each site held on it over the whole stretch. This sorts searches, not pages. A page can average below 30 and still earn clicks from the few searches where it ranks higher.
Click rate falls from 0.33% in the top ten to 0.02% below position 30.
| Average position | Click rate | Clicks | Times shown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 10 | 0.33% | 170 | 51,879 |
| 10 to 20 | 0.12% | 63 | 50,930 |
| 20 to 30 | 0.07% | 21 | 31,074 |
| Below 30 | 0.02% | 14 | 73,787 |
Two numbers matter.
The click rate more than halves between the first page and the second, from 0.33% to 0.12%. In points, that's the biggest single drop in the table, and it happens at the page break.
More than a third of the times shown sit below position 30. That's 73,787 of the 207,670 times these sites were shown, and it produced fourteen clicks across six companies in just over twelve months. All six have data for all of it.
Why the rates are this low even on the first page: on searches like these, Google usually puts ads and a map listing with three companies above the ordinary results. A lot of the calls happen there, and a call straight from the map listing never shows up in Search Console. So this table shows what the website link earns. It doesn't show everything the search is worth, and it's why the map listing is part of the work at every tier.
Where the Numbers Come From
Just over twelve months of Google Search Console data, Sept. 13, 2025 through Sept. 16, 2026. Seven sites, all of them Cube clients, six of them used here. Every one of them covers the whole year. Sites that became clients partway through it are left out. We audit our own book in public. We left out the page-per-animal site, so the comparison stays between sites of one kind. We dropped the searches that read as questions or do-it-yourself, and kept the ones that name a service or a problem.
What That Actually Means
These sites aren't invisible. Google already matches them to the right searches. It showed them 73,787 times below position 30 on searches that read like someone wanting an animal removed, and 66,529 of those, about nine in ten, sit on two of the six sites.
It showed them where almost nobody clicks.
That's a different problem from the one most owners think they have. It's not a visibility problem in the sense of nobody knowing you exist. Search engines know you exist and they're already matching you to the right searches. They're ranking you below the point where anybody sees it.
One Site, Worked Through
Take one of the six. A general pest control company. The name stays off.
Over the same stretch it collected 257,229 impressions. 29,707 were animal searches that read like a hire, 11.5% of everything the site was shown for. Nearly all of it rodent work, 25,892 of the 29,707.
Those 29,707 searches produced 39 clicks.
Almost all of this site's animal demand, 26,980 of its 29,707 times shown, already ranks better than position 20. It isn't buried. It's stuck in the teens.
Seven of its rodent searches, in order of how often they were shown:
Five of these seven average better than position 13.
| Search | Average position | Clicks | Times shown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rodent control [town] | 12.1 | 4 | 2,547 |
| Rodent control | 2.5 | 7 | 1,661 |
| Rodent control [town] plus state | 12.2 | 0 | 1,406 |
| Rodent control near me | 11.1 | 1 | 1,055 |
| Mouse exterminator near me | 10.7 | 0 | 1,034 |
| Mouse pest control near me | 14.1 | 0 | 888 |
| Mice exterminator near me | 13.4 | 2 | 883 |
Its two rodent pages barely show up: 765 times shown between them, both averaging worse than position 24. The demand lands on the homepage and on city pages about pest control in general.
The site is close. It isn't buried below position 30, where more than a third of this set's animal searches sit. It sits in the low teens on most of its rodent terms, the second band in the table above, worth 0.12%. Searches in the top ten across the set clicked at 0.33%. That's a group average, not a forecast for this site, and some of the times shown behind it are automated, which pulls every rate in the table down. This site was shown 18,880 times for animal searches in the 10 to 20 band. At the set's rates, the 0.21-point gap between that band and the top ten comes to about 40 more website clicks over the same stretch. On searches like these, the map listing above them may be worth more, and Search Console can't see the calls it sends.
Three Things to Do With This
Sort your Search Console queries by position, not by impressions. The impressions report tells you what you already rank for. The position column tells you what you're one step away from.
Work the 10 to 20 band first. Those pages already rank. They're one page away from the band that's worth more than twice as much. A term at position 45 is a much longer project.
Count what sits below 30 before you commission anything new. If most of your animal demand is down there, a new page isn't the first move. Finding out why the existing ones sank is.
What This Does Not Prove
Six sites is a small set, all of them general pest control companies, and none of them is your market.
Times shown isn't people. It counts how often a page appeared, and some of it is automated. It isn't a count of customers, and we don't report it as one. Here it only tells you where a site sits.
We start the window at Sept. 13, 2025 on purpose. Before Sept. 12, 2025, rank-tracking tools most likely added impressions at deep positions to many sites' Search Console data. Google turned off the setting they relied on that week, and earlier data would make every page here look buried deeper than it is.
Average position hides variation. A site can average 25 by sitting at 25 every day or by ranking 5 on one term and 60 on another. We used the impression-weighted average, which is the fairer version, and it's still an average.
We can't promise a term moves from 14 to 8. Different searches have different competitors, and the table above says what a position is worth, not how hard it is to reach.
There's no revenue figure here. We have impressions, clicks and position. What happened after the click isn't in this data.
The clicks are website clicks only. A call or a directions tap straight from the map listing doesn't show up in Search Console, so every click count on this page is the floor, not the total.
One more thing about the source. Search Console leaves its rarest searches out of the report entirely, so the counts above are conservative. We won't put a number on how much is missing, because the share changes from site to site. Clicks are thinner at this level of detail. Every count here is a floor.
If you want your own queries sorted this way before you spend anything, book a call or send a note and we'll pull the report with you.
Book a CallFAQ
These Are Your Clients. Why Do Their Animal Pages Rank This Low?
Because every one of them is a pest control company first, with a wildlife division beside it. Their sites were built to sell pest work, and the animal pages went in around that, not at the center. They're our clients, so the ranking is ours to answer for. That's the gap these pages measure, and closing it on these sites is on our list now.
Why Does This Page Use One Whole Year?
Because what drives a wildlife call shifts through the year, and a few months would measure the season, not the sites. Every table puts the sites side by side inside the same stretch, Sept. 13, 2025 through Sept. 16, 2026, just over twelve months, so every season is in it. Only sites with that whole year are in the set. It starts in September because rank-tracking tools inflated Google's impression counts before that.
Are All Seven Sites Cube Clients?
Yes. All seven are Cube clients, and six are used here. We audit our own book in public.
Is 'Times Shown' the Same as People Searching?
No. Google counts a time shown whenever a page appears in a result, and some of those searches are automated. It's a measure of where the pages sit, not a head count.