Case study · SEO and AI search · Professional services · UAE
Programmatic SEO for a UAE B2B company directory
3,375 visits from ChatGPT, the site's fourth-largest traffic source, behind direct, Bing and Google. Client name withheld.
By Khalil Ahmed, founder · 12 November 2026
The numbers, with the period
A directory of UAE companies with one page per company and list pages by sector and emirate. Over 16 months it earned 26.7K Google clicks from 11,046 indexed pages, mostly from searches for a company's exact name, where profile pages rank in positions 2 to 8. Bing sent more visits than Google, and ChatGPT became a top-five source. Traffic is steady rather than rising (4.74K clicks in the first 90 days, 4.25K in the last 90), and broad searches such as "construction companies in dubai" do not rank yet.
Period: Google Search Console 16 months (Jul 2025 to Nov 2026); GA4 Jan 2025 to Nov 2026. From the site's own Google Search Console and GA4 accounts, read on 12 November 2026. This is a directory Leadee built and runs; its name, the company names in its searches and page addresses are withheld. How we measured
Searches the site ranks for, without its brand name
| Search | Average position | Impressions | Clicks |
|---|---|---|---|
| top 50 construction companies in uae | 10.0 | 1,461 | 10 |
| top 100 construction companies in dubai | 10.7 | 344 | 10 |
| piling companies in uae | 10.5 | 112 | 6 |
| top 100 construction companies in uae | 11.5 | 107 | 5 |
| list of construction companies in uae with email address xls | 16.2 | 86 | 5 |
| piling contractors in dubai | 3.0 | 20 | 2 |
| top 10 logistics companies in abu dhabi | 11.1 | 44 | 2 |
| top 50 construction companies in uae pdf | 2.1 | 180 | 1 |
Where visitors come from
| Source | Sessions | Engaged |
|---|---|---|
| Bing | 31,926 | 69% |
| 27,992 | 67% | |
| Yahoo | 3,509 | 74% |
| ChatGPT | 3,375 | 58% |
| DuckDuckGo | 685 | 70% |
Which AI assistants send visitors
| AI assistant | Sessions |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 3,392 |
| Perplexity | 174 |
| Microsoft Copilot | 109 |
| Gemini | 16 |
| Claude | 4 |
Where the searches come from
| Country | Clicks | Average position |
|---|---|---|
| United Arab Emirates | 14,970 | 19.2 |
| India | 4,270 | 11.0 |
| Pakistan | 712 | 11.1 |
| United Kingdom | 614 | 22.5 |
| United States | 457 | 12.1 |
| Egypt | 335 | 10.8 |
How often AI assistants send visitors
3,392 visits from ChatGPT
GA4 sessions with ChatGPT or OpenAI as the source, Jan 2025 to Nov 2026.
5 AI assistants send visitors
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini and Claude, about 3,700 sessions in all.
Measured in GA4, not Semrush
This site was not tracked with Semrush AI Visibility. AI figures here are visits recorded by GA4.
How did the work run?
- Month 1
Buyer questions
Mapped the searches and AI prompts buyers use, then audited the site against them.
- Month 1–2
Pages that answer
Built and rewrote pages so each one answers a real buyer question clearly.
- Ongoing
Proof and listings
Strengthened the profiles, listings and sources that Google and AI assistants rely on.
- Every month
Measure and improve
Tracked rankings, AI citations and enquiries, and changed what was not working.
How we measured
- Sources
- From the site's own Google Search Console and GA4 accounts, read on 12 November 2026. This is a directory Leadee built and runs; its name, the company names in its searches and page addresses are withheld.
- Period
- Google Search Console 16 months (Jul 2025 to Nov 2026); GA4 Jan 2025 to Nov 2026.
- Click
- A visit from a Google or Bing results page, as reported by Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Impression
- A time the site appeared in search results for a query, as reported by the same tools.
- Non-brand query
- A search that does not include the client's name. These show visibility earned with new buyers.
- AI-feature impression
- A time a page appeared in Google's AI Overviews or AI Mode, from Search Console's Generative AI report.
- AI citation
- A time an AI answer linked the site as a source: in Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report, which covers Microsoft Copilot, Bing AI summaries and select partners without a split, or in an AI answer tracked by Semrush.
- AI assistant session
- A GA4 session whose source is ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot. Sessions from SEO tools are excluded.
Questions about this case
Why does a directory get traffic from ChatGPT?
Each company has its own page with the same facts in the same order: what it does, where it is and how to reach it. AI assistants that browse the web can find and quote a page like that. GA4 counted 3,375 sessions from ChatGPT and about 3,700 from all AI assistants.
Which searches bring the most clicks?
Searches for a single company's name, where the company's profile page ranks in positions 2 to 8. List searches come next: "top 50 construction companies in uae" averages position 10.0 with 1,461 impressions. Broad searches such as "construction companies in dubai" average position 81 and bring almost no clicks.
Did traffic grow?
It held steady. The first 90 days of the period had 4.74K clicks and the last 90 days had 4.25K, about 1,500 a month. Every page fails Google's loading-speed test and 11,408 pages are not indexed yet, so the next gains come from speed and indexing.
Where do the numbers come from?
From the site's own Google Search Console and GA4 accounts, read on 12 November 2026. This is a directory Leadee built and runs; its name, the company names in its searches and page addresses are withheld. The client name and page addresses are withheld.
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