We recently launched TopicalBoost, our AI-powered platform that automatically analyzes your content, identifies topics, and implements the technical changes needed to signal your expertise to search engines.
Before launching publicly, we used TopicalBoost to increase News, Google Discover, and Google News traffic for our consulting clients.
Below are some mini case studies exploring how TopicalBoost generated over 400,000 clicks for one client, the single best Google News day for another, and increased overall traffic by 50% for yet another.
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Prior to TopicalBoost being in place, fdd.org had essentially no News or Google News traffic at all (right Y axis) and a modest amount of Google Discover traffic (left Y axis).
I’ve combined all these into a single graph so you can see how launching TopicalBoost on June 3, 2024 caused this site to spring to life in these Google properties.
Let’s compare before TopicalBoost (Sept 2023 – May 2024) to after TopicalBoost (June 2024 – Feb 2025):
Before TopicalBoost
After TopicalBoost
As you can see, in the 8 months since the launch of TopicalBoost, FDD has seen traffic increase thanks primarily to an over 10x increase in Google Discover traffic.
News and Google News have gone from nearly nothing to generating over 100,000 clicks combined.
TopicalBoost generated this traffic at the cost of 1.5¢ per click.
Reason Magazine
TopicalBoost went live on reason.com on October 20, 2024.
Despite its focus on policy and politics, reason.com had no significant spikes from Google Discover or Google News in the lead-up to the 2024 election, but saw significant spikes in clicks from these sources after TopicalBoost launched on their site.
Let’s compare the 3 months before TopicalBoost to the three months after:
Before TopicalBoost
After TopicalBoost
While News remained relatively flat, due to the typical holiday traffic slump, TopicalBoost nearly quadrupled Google Discover traffic after launch.
Reason also saw its largest ever Google News day—40,000 clicks in a single day—after TopicalBoost went live.
TopicalBoost generated this added traffic at the cost of 1.2¢ per click.
This implementation is still only half complete as Reason’s web team is working to retire their legacy tags before making topic links live. Once that work is complete, we expect to see Web and News clicks increase.
Pacific Legal Foundation
TopicalBoost went live on pacificlegal.org on December 1, 2024.
Let’s compare the 65 days prior to launch to the 65 days since.
Before TopicalBoost
After TopicalBoost
Pacific Legal typically sees 30,000 to 40,000 organic clicks a month, so the influx of Discover traffic has resulted in a 50% overall increase in traffic and has helped expose their work to a large new audience.
Thanks to nearly 60,000 clicks from Discover, overall traffic has actually been up over a period when most sites see a dip around the holidays.
TopicalBoost generated this traffic at the cost of 0.4¢ per click.
As with Reason Magazine, this implementation is still only half complete. Once frontend topic links go live, we expect Web and News traffic to a see boost.