A few weeks ago, I shared an update on an SEO recovery project that was heavily focused on technical fixes. Since then, it's become clear that we're not just recovering traffic, we're also restoring the client's visibility through mentions and citations.
When we started, the Bing Webmaster AI report showed literally zero activity. Due to a range of technical issues, the site was completely invisible to both Bing and Copilot. That changed in mid-December, when we saw the first signs of progress. On the same day impressions and clicks started appearing, citations and mentions began showing up on the dashboard as well.
Bing's reporting is limited, since it only tracks first-party data. To get a fuller picture, I turned to Ahrefs' Brand Radar. It gave me visibility into:
How the brand appears across Google's AI, Copilot, ChatGPT, and Perplexity
Mention and citation data by competitor
Trends over time
The data confirmed what the Bing dashboard hinted at: citations began improving in the same timeframe we started seeing technical traction.
Now, 14 weeks into the recovery, here's where we stand:
Traffic is up 183%
We've recovered 25% of the total traffic loss
Citations per day have increased by 2.5x
Technical SEO isn't just about bringing back search traffic; it's also rebuilding visibility in AI-driven surfaces.
A quick recap of what we've been working on:
Identifying and blocking thousands of filter pages
Removing JavaScript dependencies from critical content
Implementing bulk internal linking without JS
Redirecting thousands of broken links (404s)
Improving mobile navigation
Strengthening product schema
Fixing breadcrumb structure
Next, we're focusing on:
Targeting "how to" search intent
Enhancing the shop badge for Shopping results
Continuing index cleanup (100k+ more pages to remove)
Technical SEO continues to deliver the most durable and effective gains. For the sake of your business, don't overlook it.
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