Case study · my own store
Ten years in search, a four-year plateau, half of Google gone. My store, my numbers
This is my flower delivery store in Krasnodar, Russia. Ten years in search, four to five hundred orders a month across channels, 992 reviews on the site. Here I show what usually gets hidden: what an agency left behind, what a Google update drop really looks like, and what I'm doing to win it back.
- 10 yrs
- the store has lived in search
- 400-500
- orders a month across all channels
- 4.8
- rating on 2GIS maps, 103 votes
- 5.0
- on Yandex Maps, 290 reviews
Here I pay for my own mistakes
Krasnodarflora is not a client project. It's a business where I answer for everything: flower purchasing, florists, couriers, the site and its marketing. Every SEO mistake here costs me real money, not a line in someone's report.
For years the site was handled by an external agency. In June 2026 I took SEO in-house and started with a full audit: 12 reports, 65+ findings, from junk pages in the index to incomplete structured data.
What the audit showed
Everything below can be verified in the site code and webmaster panels. These are the highlights.
- 1
Organic traffic flat for four years
From July 2022 to June 2025 search traffic hovered around five thousand visits a month, seasonal March peaks aside. Years of paid SEO didn't move the line.
- 2
May 2026: the Google core update
After the update, Google traffic nearly halved year over year: from 4,079 visits in June 2025 to 2,001 in June 2026. Updates don't forgive a weak foundation.
- 3
Hundreds of junk pages in the index
Empty sections, duplicates and auto-generated filter pages were eating crawl budget. I removed 300+ of them with proper 301 redirects.
- 4
Template-generated titles
Titles were assembled by a generator, duplicated each other and got truncated in results. Key pages are now rewritten by hand for real queries.
- 5
Analytics was lying
Up to 97 percent of "direct visits" turned out to be bots without JavaScript. Until that was filtered out, any conclusion drawn from analytics was garbage.
- 6
Ratings without a backbone
Product markup was incomplete, and I rejected the idea of painting fake scores outright. Storefront ratings are now computed from confirmed orders.
What got done in the first weeks
The order is simple: foundation first, then content, then growth.
Technical foundation
- 300+ junk pages removed with 301 redirects
- Canonicals for filters and product duplicates
- A curated sitemap instead of auto-generation
- Bot filtering in analytics and scraper protection
Structure and content
- A delivery hub section with internal linking
- SEO copy and FAQ for 62 catalog sections
- 334 product descriptions rewritten without AI clichés
- Tag chips to catch long-tail queries
Commercial pages
- Product card and catalog listing redesign
- Honest ratings and order counters on the storefront
- Per-stem prices with quantity discounts
- Speed: script cleanup, self-hosted fonts
Local search
- 2GIS and Yandex Business: profiles, photos, review replies
- A 4.8 rating across 103 votes on 2GIS, 5.0 across 290 reviews on Yandex Maps
- A bouquet photo before delivery as a public promise
Checkpoint 1: September 2026
Back in summer I promised the first checkpoint in September, whatever the numbers. Here it is. I compare against the same days last year so the season can't pass for growth. Source: Metrica counter 42046359 and completed site orders.
Google traffic for September 1-15 is down 26% year over year. Orders from Google are up 17%, with a 3.4% conversion rate on Google organic. Fewer people arrive and more of them buy: product pages, speed and checkout did that.
Whole site: conversion 3.35% vs 2.5% a year ago, 3.8% vs 2.5% on phones. Average order ₽6,946 vs ₽5,258. Completed site orders for September 1-22: 183 vs 147, up 24%. Revenue on them ₽1.22M vs ₽0.78M.
Paid search stopped losing money. In late June an ad-driven order cost ₽3,915 against a margin of about ₽2,500. In September it costs ₽1,550-1,860. The key step was to stop trusting the ad dashboard: for August it reported 177 conversions, while Metrica counted 39 real orders.
The whole business, all channels: 494 orders for September 1-28 vs 399 for the same days in August.
A flat plateau under the agency, seasonal March peaks, and the drop after the May 2026 Google update. I publish this chart because this is the reality I work with.
Data: Yandex.Metrica, counter 42046359 · July 2022 · June 2026
Show data as a table
| Search visits | |
|---|---|
| 07.22 | 5 010 |
| 08.22 | 5 474 |
| 09.22 | 5 051 |
| 10.22 | 5 695 |
| 11.22 | 6 301 |
| 12.22 | 5 697 |
| 01.23 | 5 221 |
| 02.23 | 7 426 |
| 03.23 | 11 457 |
| 04.23 | 4 653 |
| 05.23 | 5 130 |
| 06.23 | 4 404 |
| 07.23 | 4 402 |
| 08.23 | 4 582 |
| 09.23 | 4 884 |
| 10.23 | 4 477 |
| 11.23 | 4 863 |
| 12.23 | 4 346 |
| 01.24 | 3 938 |
| 02.24 | 6 703 |
| 03.24 | 12 341 |
| 04.24 | 4 584 |
| 05.24 | 5 333 |
| 06.24 | 4 451 |
| 07.24 | 4 440 |
| 08.24 | 5 042 |
| 09.24 | 5 010 |
| 10.24 | 5 204 |
| 11.24 | 5 411 |
| 12.24 | 4 827 |
| 01.25 | 4 830 |
| 02.25 | 7 166 |
| 03.25 | 11 306 |
| 04.25 | 4 796 |
| 05.25 | 6 674 |
| 06.25 | 6 127 |
| 07.25 | 6 035 |
| 08.25 | 6 119 |
| 09.25 | 4 695 |
| 10.25 | 4 468 |
| 11.25 | 4 526 |
| 12.25 | 4 505 |
| 01.26 | 4 181 |
| 02.26 | 5 666 |
| 03.26 | 8 682 |
| 04.26 | 3 706 |
| 05.26 | 3 752 |
| 06.26 | 2 868 |
Yandex grew from 566 visits in July 2024 to 2,575 at the March 2026 peak. Google lost half after the update. Betting on one engine is a risk, and diversification is how I remove it.
Data: Yandex.Metrica, counter 42046359 · July 2024 · June 2026
Show data as a table
| Yandex | ||
|---|---|---|
| 07.24 | 566 | 3 858 |
| 08.24 | 629 | 4 397 |
| 09.24 | 649 | 4 337 |
| 10.24 | 686 | 4 507 |
| 11.24 | 788 | 4 607 |
| 12.24 | 1 033 | 3 767 |
| 01.25 | 1 191 | 3 614 |
| 02.25 | 1 445 | 5 688 |
| 03.25 | 2 421 | 8 860 |
| 04.25 | 1 169 | 3 606 |
| 05.25 | 2 308 | 4 342 |
| 06.25 | 2 034 | 4 079 |
| 07.25 | 2 246 | 3 762 |
| 08.25 | 1 915 | 4 174 |
| 09.25 | 1 344 | 3 313 |
| 10.25 | 1 214 | 3 223 |
| 11.25 | 1 238 | 3 274 |
| 12.25 | 1 363 | 3 130 |
| 01.26 | 1 229 | 2 934 |
| 02.26 | 1 648 | 3 995 |
| 03.26 | 2 575 | 6 076 |
| 04.26 | 1 114 | 2 574 |
| 05.26 | 822 | 2 907 |
| 06.26 | 856 | 2 001 |
Honest status
What this checkpoint doesn't show: traffic hasn't come back. The main query on Google has sat on page two since June and isn't climbing. A noticeable share of September's growth came from paid search: 49 ad orders in the first half of the month vs 21 a year ago. Yandex brings as many visitors as last year but fewer orders, 14 vs 24. That's the next job. New checkpoints will be added here.
Questions, answered
Why publish a case study with falling traffic?
Because it's true, and because I sell a method, not fairy tales. The May 2026 Google update hit a huge number of stores. The difference is that I show, on my own numbers, what to do about it.
How is this case useful to me as a client?
You see how I work when my own money is on the line: diagnosis, priorities, technical work, content, local search. Client projects get exactly the same method.
What do honest ratings mean?
Scores on the store site are computed from confirmed orders. Faking reviews would have been easy, but it's a time bomb, and I offer clients the same principle.
Can these numbers be checked?
The store is public: krasnodarflora.ru. Reviews and map ratings on 2GIS and Yandex Maps are public too. The charts are built from a Yandex.Metrica export, the counter ID is right under them.
See also
SEO for florists
What we do for flower shops, the 30-day pilot and prices.
The 383-site study
Which mistakes cost flower delivery sites orders, and how to check yours.
Monthly SEO
A $690 pilot, then $990 or $1,390 a month.
Case study · client, in progress
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Case study · a system for the business
Four channels, four hundred orders a month, one system. Repeat orders up from 28% to 36% since May
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Case study · money & operations
The money came in, but the order still says unpaid. Six leaks we found in our own shop
Read the case
Free, 2-3 days
I do the same breakdown for clients
I'll start with a free review: where you stand, what's holding you back, and what to fix first. No top-1-by-Friday promises.
- A prioritized list of problems: what to fix first, what can wait
- Demand in your niche: how many people search for it and where you rank now
- What your team can handle in-house and what is worth handing to us
We reply in writing within a couple of hours. No calls needed and no sales script.
Numbers you can check
- ≈400
- orders a month in the flower shop I run
- 36.2%
- of orders in Sept 2026 came from returning customers, up from 28.1% in May
- 10 years
- that site in search, full history on the table
The same case shows a 51% Google drop in May 2026. Most people hide that. I show it and write what I am doing about it.