Growth Audit: The Outside View — RoomSketcher (Issue #7)

00 — Q2 OKR Scoreboard

How the Period Maps to Q2 OKRs

Jo's Q2 marketing OKRs define three objectives. This section reads each one against the data this cycle. The story flipped versus last cycle: the SEO/GEO and communication objectives both improved — head terms recovered, the LLM Visibility Score on "software" jumped, and all-source sign-ups and purchases rose — while paid efficiency became the new concern. Spend was scaled up hard on Bing (+89%) and cut on Google (-27%); total paid conversions still fell ~15% and blended cost-per-conversion rose from ~$35 to ~$64. The Issue #5 site-speed regression also remains open (PSI re-run pending this cycle — API quota).

Objective 1Boost Paid channels through structure & campaign optimization

At Risk

Key Result	Tracked Via	This Cycle	Direction
Increased subs at lower CAC	Combined Google+Bing New Subscription, US, paid CPA	New Sub ~10.6/day (flat) · blended CPA ~$35 → ~$64	CAC worsened

Budget was reallocated hard — Google down, Bing up. Google US spend fell -27% (Search NORAM -61%, Competitors -42%) and was partly redirected into P-Max (+46%); on Google, conversions fell -31%. Bing US spend rose +89% ($3,987 → $7,518/day), scaling Search (+118%), Competitors and Branded.
The blended result went the wrong way for this objective. Combined paid spend rose ~+56% ($5.5k → $8.6k/day) while total paid conversions fell ~-15% — so blended cost-per-conversion rose from ~$35 to ~$64. New subscriptions held roughly flat (~10.6/day), not increased. "More subs at lower CAC" did not happen this cycle; subs were flat at a materially higher CAC.
The Bing scale-up did buy more Bing conversions (+72%), but at a slightly worse Bing CPA ($159 → $174) and the new spend leaned on expensive lines (Bing Competitors CPA ~$351, Branded ~$293). Google's cheap-per-conversion volume (mostly free signups, ~$12/conv) was cut at the same time — so the mix shifted toward the costlier engine.
Marked At Risk this cycle. The first question (Action #2) is whether the Bing scale-up and Google pullback are intentional — and if so, whether the blended CAC increase is an accepted cost of a test or a signal to rebalance back toward Google's cheaper conversion volume.

Objective 2Expand SEO/GEO visibility through adjacent topics

On Track

Key Result	Tracked Via	This Cycle	Direction
#1 in LLMs (LLM Visibility Score)	2 anchor queries × 6 LLMs, NYC, biweekly	creator 100% · software 79.2% → 95.8%	Software +16.6 pts
— GSC position "floor plan software"	GSC organic position (US)	14.5 → ~9.5 (page 1)	Improved +5.0
Increased organic non-brand clicks (NORAM)	GSC clicks/day (US)	1,147/day (vs 1,141)	+0.5% · still -29% since Feb
Floor Plan Creator page live	GSC URL Inspection (carried)	Live & indexed; head term climbing (~20)	Improving

The LLM Visibility Score — Jo's primary OKR 2 metric — had its best cycle yet. Fresh June 29 reading: "best floorplan software" jumped from 79.2% to 95.8% as both Gemini and Perplexity flipped RoomSketcher to their outright #1 / "gold standard" software pick; "best floor plan creator" held a perfect 100% (wins all six LLMs). The software term — the long-standing soft spot — is now nearly maxed (Section 3).
The head terms recovered in parallel — the GSC and LLM signals rhyme. "floor plan software" 14.5 → 9.5 (onto page 1), "best floor plan software" 9.8 → 8.6, "floor plan creator" 24.1 → 19.9. "floor plan maker" held at ~25 and "floor plan app" slipped 10.5 → 11.9 — the two terms with no dedicated page remain the laggards.
The caveat is breadth, not the head terms. GSC clicks were essentially flat (+0.5%) and impressions roughly flat (-0.8%), but both remain ~29% below the February baseline — total organic footprint is still gradually narrower than it was. Average position drifted slightly (9.68 → 9.88). The terms that matter improved; the long tail is still where the slow erosion sits (Action #3).
Upgraded to On Track on the strength of the primary KR — the GEO win on "software" is the single strongest OKR 2 signal in the tracked period. The watch item is whether organic volume (not just rank) starts to follow the head-term recovery next cycle.

Objective 3Strengthen communication through consistency and benefit-focus

On Track

Key Result	Tracked Via	This Cycle	Direction
Increased sign-up rate (NORAM)	GA4 `sign_up` + `new_subscription` (US)	sign_up +9.2% / new_sub +2.3% vs last	Recovered
Key pages updated	Key Page Audit & Update (initiative)	Pending	TBD

The all-source funnel recovered this cycle — and did so while paid free-signups were being cut, which is the notable part. The 6-week view (4 wks ago → last → current):

sign_up: 280.1 → 250.9 → 274.1/day — back up +9.2% vs last, near the cycle high.
new_subscription: 19.4 → 17.5 → 17.9/day — +2.3% vs last.
purchase: 31.2 → 30.7 → 33.6/day — +9.5% vs last, the strongest reading of the tracked period.
The reconciliation is the story. GA4 all-source sign-ups rose +9% even though Google-Ads-attributed free signups fell ~-29% — organic and Bing more than filled the gap left by the Google pullback. The people arriving from non-paid sources are converting (purchase up +9.5%). This is the clearest evidence that the channel mix can absorb a Google cut without losing top-of-funnel.
On Track and improving. The Key Page Audit initiative remains the support move; the watch item is sustaining the funnel if the paid pullback deepens further.

Initiative status (external read): The Issue #5 site-speed regression remains open and unverified this cycle — the PageSpeed Insights API hit its daily quota during this run, so the homepage Lighthouse values are carried forward from June 15 (mobile Perf 60, mobile LCP 13.1s; desktop 96) with a fresh re-run pending. The likely cause is unchanged: render-blocking CSS, 9 stylesheets in the page head delaying first paint (Action #1, Section 7). /floor-plan-creator/ remains live and indexed and the head term is now climbing (24.1 → ~19.9). The Affiliate Pilot and FloorCapture comparison pages remain externally undetectable (zero "affiliate"/"floorcapture" US query impressions). Section 10 actions are tagged with the OKR objective they serve.

01 — Growth Scorecard

Growth Scorecard

Trackable KPIs updated every two weeks, with a 17-week weekly trend chart embedded beside each metric group so direction is visible at a glance, not just the latest two-week delta. All metrics are filtered to United States users on roomsketcher.com only.

Scope: United States users on roomsketcher.com. GA4 and GSC filtered to country = USA. Google Ads filtered to user_location_view.country_criterion_id = 2840 (United States). Bing Ads xlsx filtered to Country = United States. Timeframes (three 14-day windows for trend visibility): Current: June 15 – June 28, 2026. Last Period: June 1 – June 14, 2026. 4 Weeks Ago: May 18 – May 31, 2026. Session metrics shown as daily averages. The Δ column compares Current vs Last Period; the 4-Wks-Ago column lets you spot when a movement is genuine direction vs noise. The "4 Wks Ago" and "Last Period" columns carry forward Issue #6's published "Last Period" and "Current" columns (each issue's Current becomes the next issue's Last). GSC daily values cover 13 of 14 days (6/15–6/27) due to GSC reporting lag; daily averages remain comparable.

Reading the trends — four headline movements this cycle:

Paid efficiency is the new concern — the headline finding. Spend was scaled up hard on Bing (+89%, $3,987 → $7,518/day) and cut on Google (-27%), with Google budget partly pushed into P-Max (+46%). Combined paid spend rose ~+56% while total paid conversions fell ~-15%, so blended cost-per-conversion rose from ~$35 to ~$64. New subscriptions held flat (~10.6/day). A deliberate reallocation — but it consolidated subs at a materially higher CAC (Section 0 OKR 1, Section 8).
GEO/SEO had its best cycle — the head terms recovered and the LLM "software" score jumped. "floor plan software" climbed 14.5 → 9.5 (page 1), "floor plan creator" 24.1 → 19.9, and the LLM Visibility Score on "best floorplan software" jumped 79.2% → 95.8% as Gemini and Perplexity both made RoomSketcher their #1. The GSC and LLM signals rhyme (Sections 3 & 4).
The all-source funnel rose while paid was cut — the reconciliation. GA4 sign_up +9.2% and purchase +9.5% even as Google-Ads-attributed free signups fell ~-29%. Organic and Bing filled the gap; the channel mix absorbed the Google pullback without losing top-of-funnel (Section 1 GA4 group).
AI referral clicks fell while AI visibility rose. ChatGPT referral sessions dropped 42.1 → 28.8/day (-32%) and total AI referrals -31%, even as the LLM Visibility Score hit new highs. RoomSketcher is being recommended more but clicked through less — consistent with more answers resolving in-chat (zero-click). Worth watching, not yet alarming (Section 3).

KPI 4 Wks Ago
May 18 – May 31 Last Period
June 1 – June 14 Current
June 15 – June 28 Δ vs Last Status

Website Traffic (US) — daily averages

Total Website Sessions 4,598/day 4,410/day 4,215/day -4.4%

Direct Sessions 2,164/day 2,112/day 2,078/day -1.6%

Organic Search Sessions 1,261/day 1,246/day 1,207/day -3.1%

Paid Search + Cross-network 765/day 646/day 425/day -34.2%

Paid Other (Microsoft Ads, GA4) 124/day 142/day 225/day +58.5%

Why Is Organic Down? — The Question Behind This Chart

Organic Decline Is Mostly AI Absorbing Low-Value Informational Demand — Not Lost Commercial Ground

Organic Search is down ~29% since February and eased again this cycle (1,246 → 1,207/day). The cause is largely benign: AI search — Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT — is absorbing the informational demand that never converted, while RoomSketcher's commercial terms and conversions strengthened. Three things in the data establish it:

The lost volume is definitional / how-to queries answered directly on-SERP — "700 square feet" (1,524 impressions, 1 click, 0.07% CTR), "how to read a floor plan" (716 impr, 1 click), "ada bathroom requirements," "what is a duplex." They rank well; the answer resolves in the AI box and the click never happens (zero-click).
CTR rose, it did not fall (1.02% → 1.05% → 1.06%). The site is shedding junk impressions, so the traffic that remains is higher-intent — if AI were skimming clicks off good queries, CTR would be dropping.
Conversions rose while volume fell (GA4 sign_up +9.2%, purchase +9.5%) and the commercial head terms improved ("floor plan software" 14.5 → 9.5 onto page 1; "creator" clicks +133%). The demand that remains converts as well or better.

The reassurance: RoomSketcher is winning the AI-answer layer — the LLM Visibility Score on "software" jumped to 95.8% this cycle and "creator" is a perfect 100% (Section 3). The brand is still in the answer; it is the click that is migrating, not the recommendation.

Stabilization caveat — be precise: this cycle's flattening is Homepage-led, not broad. Homepage clicks rose +45% (now above the May peak) and masked continued click erosion in the content library. Aggregate GSC impressions/clicks were flat (−0.8% / +0.5%), but the content sections are still ceding low-value clicks to AI:

Section (US, daily avg)	Impressions last → cur	Clicks last → cur	Read
Homepage	2,457 → 3,209	75 → 108 (+45%)	Genuine engine — above May peak
Blog (how-to)	29,407 → 34,990	141 → 127 (−10%)	Impressions up, clicks ceding to AI
Gallery	11,214 → 13,004	104 → 99 (−5%)	Impr up; duplicate meta caps CTR
Features	3,240 → 3,441	23 → 19 (−18%)	Flat impr, bleeding clicks
Other / tool pages	13,487 → 14,379	56 → 52 (−7%)	room/kitchen planner slipping

▲ Defend

Homepage; brand SERP (13.9% CTR); commercial head terms (creator +133%, software +49% clicks); /room-planner/ & /kitchen-planner/ (slipping); "app" cluster (best non-brand CTR but −17%).

△ Let Go → AEO

"X square feet," "how to read a floor plan / blueprint," ADA bathroom, "what is a duplex." Near-0% CTR, fully answered on-SERP. Stop chasing the click; format for AI citation instead (Action #5).

↻ Re-Target

Gallery — templated metadata to convert rising impressions (Action #6); /blog/floor-plan-symbols/ (cite and click); emerging "event floor plan" cluster; /office-design/ pages.

Source: GSC page- and query-cluster decomposition, US, current vs last 14-day window (Action #3). Aggregate figures are date-level GSC (reliable); section/cluster splits are page-level — named pages, ~66% of total impressions.

Closing Pages — Where Captured Demand Converts

/pricing/ Is Holding Through the Paid Cut — but /get-started/ Lost 60% of Its Traffic, Almost All of It Direct

As AI absorbs the informational top of the funnel, the two closing pages — /pricing/ (evaluate) and /get-started/ (sign-up entry) — are where captured demand turns into accounts. One held; one sprang a leak.

Page (US, 14-day, all channels)	Sessions last → cur	Conversions last → cur	Engagement	Organic position
/pricing/	2,067 → 2,139 (+3.5%)	289 → 260 (−10%)	89% (held)	~#2 (top of page 1)
/get-started/	3,517 → 1,400 (−60%)	562 → 220 (−61%)	87% (held)	~#4 (org impr +277%)

/pricing/ — resilient. It absorbed the −47% Google Paid Search cut the same way the whole funnel did: Direct held flat (1,062 → 1,062), Organic grew +50% (335 → 501), and Bing / Cross-network rose, offsetting the paid loss. It ranks ~#2 organically — a strong closing page. (Its low organic CTR at that position is a snippet/title opportunity, not a problem.)

/get-started/ — a real capture leak. The page itself is fine (engagement held at 87%), and organic actually surged on impressions. The −60% is isolated to one channel:

/get-started/ by channel (sessions)	Last	Current	Δ
Direct (sign-up re-entry)	2,922	1,074	−63% (−1,848)
Paid Search	198	40	−80% (paid pullback)
Organic Search	239	227	flat

A −1,848-session Direct drop with conversions falling in lockstep (−61%) is too large to be noise. /get-started/ Direct is dominated by returning users hitting "Get Started" from the app, an email link, or a bookmark — so the most likely causes are (1) the Flutter app or an email link changing where it points (now landing elsewhere or tagged differently, so it left "Direct"), or (2) an untagged campaign that was landing here as "Direct" ending alongside the paid pullback. Least likely is a genuine demand drop, since engagement held. This is a focused diagnostic, and it ties directly to the Direct/Unassigned attribution clean-up (Action #8): break /get-started/ Direct down by day and device to see whether it stepped off a cliff on one date (= a link/routing change) or eroded gradually (= demand).

Source: GA4 (property 346957354), landing-page sessions/key-events by channel, US, June 1–14 vs June 15–28; GSC organic position/impressions for each URL, US.

Bing / Microsoft (US)

Bing Organic Sessions 66/day 65/day 73/day +12%

Copilot Sessions 1.3/day 3.2/day 0.8/day -75%

AI Referral Traffic (US) — ChatGPT + Gemini + Perplexity + Copilot + Claude

All AI Platforms (total) 56.1/day 50.0/day 34.4/day -31.3%

ChatGPT 49.1/day 42.1/day 28.8/day -31.6%

Gemini 2.6/day 2.1/day 2.1/day Flat

Perplexity 2.4/day 1.8/day 2.1/day +19%

Copilot 1.3/day 3.2/day 0.8/day -75%

Claude 0.6/day 0.9/day 0.6/day -36%

Search Console (US) — current covers 13 of 14 days due to GSC reporting lag

GSC Total Clicks 1,171/day 1,141/day 1,147/day +0.5%

GSC Total Impressions 114,442/day 108,881/day 108,046/day -0.8%

Avg. GSC Position 10.32 9.68 9.88 -0.20 ↓

Implied GSC CTR 1.02% 1.05% 1.06% +0.01 pts

Key Keyword Positions (US) — OKR 2 anchor terms (GSC positions re-pulled fresh)

"Floor Plan Creator" Position ~24.1 ~24.1 ~19.9 +4.2 ↑

"Floor Plan Maker" Position ~27.1 ~25.1 ~25.0 +0.1 ↑

"Floor Plan Software" Position ~17.2 ~14.5 ~9.5 +5.0 ↑

"Floor Plan App" Position ~11.4 ~10.5 ~11.9 -1.4 ↓

"Best Floor Plan Software" Position ~9.8 ~9.8 ~8.6 +1.2 ↑

LLM Visibility Score (US · NYC) — OKR 2 primary KR — fresh reading June 29 (prior = June 15)

"best floor plan creator" (LLM) 95.8% 100.0% 100.0% Flat

"best floorplan software" (LLM) 79.2% 79.2% 95.8% +16.6 pts

Google Ads (US) — Spend & Efficiency (NOK) — via user_location_view, country_criterion_id = 2840

Google Ad Spend 18,657 NOK/day 16,804 NOK/day 12,207 NOK/day -27.4%

Google Ad Spend (USD equiv.) ~$1,698/day ~$1,529/day ~$1,111/day -27.4%

Google Ad Clicks 1,073/day 892/day 595/day -33.3%

Google Ad Conversions (all) 145.6/day 125.8/day 90.7/day -27.9%

Google CPA (NOK) 128 NOK 134 NOK 135 NOK +0.4%

Google Ads (US) — Conversions by Goal (14-day totals)

Google — Free Account (Personal) 1,720 1,452 1,036 -28.6%

Google — Free Account (Business) 151 161 112 -30.4%

Google — New Subscription 133 116 93 -19.8%

Google — Premium Project 26 24 19 -20.8%

Google — Ready Made Purchase 8 7 9 +28.6%

Google — Renew Subscription 0 0 0 Flat

Microsoft (Bing) Ads (US) — USD — spend +89% as budget scaled into Search/Competitors

Bing Ad Spend $4,033/day $3,977/day $7,519/day +89.1%

Bing Ad Clicks 250/day 291/day 468/day +60.8%

Bing Ad Conversions 20.3/day 25.1/day 43.1/day +71.7%

Bing CPA $199 $159 $174 +9.4%

Microsoft (Bing) Ads (US) — Conversions by Goal (14-day totals)

Bing — Free Account (Personal) 221 277 507 +83%

Bing — Free Account (Business) 36 33 32 -3%

Bing — New Subscription 23 33 55 +65%

Bing — Premium Project 4 5 7 +40%

Bing — Ready Made Purchase 0 2 3 +50%

GA4 Conversion Events (US, all sources) — OKR 3 lens (all-source funnel UP while ads-attributed fell)

Sign-ups (GA4 sign_up) 280.1/day 250.9/day 274.1/day +9.2%

New Subscription (GA4) 19.4/day 17.5/day 17.9/day +2.3%

Purchase (GA4) 31.2/day 30.7/day 33.6/day +9.5%

Order Ready Made (GA4) 7.6/day 7.6/day 7.6/day Flat (carried)

New Premium Project (GA4) 3.5/day 3.5/day 3.5/day Flat (carried)

Baseline / Neutral Good / Improving Watch Needs Attention Volume Too Small to Interpret %

02 — Traffic Overview

The 30,000-Foot View (US)

US users drove 59,006 sessions across all channels during this 14-day period — a daily average of 4,215, down from 4,410/day the prior window (-4.4%). The mix shape held, but the composition shifted within paid: Direct eased only slightly (-1.6%) and Organic -3.1%, while Paid Search + Cross-network fell -34% as Google search budget was cut and Paid Other (Bing) rose +58% as Bing spend scaled up. The softness is concentrated in Google paid, not organic.

Direct

29,088 (49.3%)

Organic Search

16,892 (28.6%)

Paid Search + Cross-net

5,953 (10.1%)

Paid Other (Microsoft Ads)

3,154 (5.3%)

Bing (Organic)

1,019 (1.7%)

Referral

965 (1.6%)

AI Referral

481 (0.8%)

Social + Email + Other

1,054 (1.8%)

Data period: June 15 – June 28, 2026 (14 days), US only. All figures from Google Analytics 4 filtered to country = United States. The shape is stable but paid rotated engines: Paid Search + Cross-network (Google) fell from 14.6% to 10.1% of US traffic as Google search spend was cut, while Paid Other (Bing) rose from 3.2% to 5.3% as Bing scaled up. Organic Search held its ~29% share even as its absolute volume drifted slightly. Bing organic and AI Referral lines are carved out for visibility (Bing organic also sits inside Organic Search; AI referrals sit inside Referral/Unassigned). A separate Unassigned bucket of ~1,459 sessions is analyzed in Section 02a.

02a — Direct Traffic Composition

Inside Direct Traffic (US)

Direct is again the largest US channel at 29,088 sessions (49% of US traffic). It's also the most opaque: "Direct" in GA4 is a catch-all for any session GA4 can't attribute to a known source. The composition is stable cycle-to-cycle — roughly 40% of "Direct" is existing-user lifecycle traffic, dark-social shares, or noise rather than new acquisition.

Direct's internal composition is stable cycle-to-cycle; the page-level split below is representative (carried from the prior 14-day window) and is used to characterize the channel, not as fresh period totals.

Top Landing Pages of Direct Sessions (US, representative)

Landing page	Sessions	% of Direct	What it really is
`/user/add/`	5,974	19.7%	Signup form return — users coming back from email/app to register
`/` (homepage)	4,632	15.3%	True direct + dark-social mix
`(not set)`	3,556	11.7%	Lost-attribution sessions, mostly app-platform
`/get-started/`	3,412	11.3%	Signup flow re-entry
`/360/?gid=...` (virtual tour shares)	1,809	6.0%	Dark-social shares (Slack/iMessage/Pinterest strip referrers)
`/user/login/`	1,701	5.6%	Login page bookmark
`/pricing/`	1,019	3.4%	Returning evaluators
`/download-windows/` + `/download-mac/`	1,124	3.7%	Install on second device — existing users
`/features/draw-floor-plans/`	314	1.0%	True direct demand
All other pages	~6,757	~22%	Long tail (deep pages, returning visits)

The Conversion-Rate Tell

Direct's conversion rate is again ~4× higher than Organic Search — the signal that "Direct" is dominated by existing users, not cold prospects. (Conversions = GA4 key events, US, this period.)

Channel	Sessions	Key Events	Conv rate
Direct	30,296	3,181	10.5%
Paid Search	8,275	609	7.4%
Cross-network	2,433	172	7.1%
Paid Other (Bing)	1,738	117	6.7%
Referral	1,378	45	3.3%
Organic Search	17,648	412	2.3%
Email	407	9	2.2%
Unassigned (anomaly)	1,709	940	55.0%

Attribution Anomaly — Persists

The "Unassigned" Channel: 940 Key Events on 1,709 Sessions (55% Conv Rate)

The anomaly first flagged in Issue #4 persists: GA4's "Unassigned" bucket carries ~1,459 sessions this cycle at a conversion rate far above any cold-traffic norm — impossible for genuine new traffic. It's almost certainly existing-user conversions where GA4 lost the source attribution but kept the user_id. Every conversion sitting in Unassigned is one the channel scorecard can't attribute to anything, so paid/organic credit is understated by a structural margin every cycle. It recurs cycle after cycle, which makes it a reporting gap, not a one-off. Section 10 Action #5 carries the clean-up.

Implication

The Reported 47% "Direct" Share Overstates Acquisition Performance

Carving out the ~40% of Direct that's lifecycle/share/noise drops the "true new-acquisition Direct" share of US sessions from 49% to roughly 29%. That's still a large channel — brand search and dark social are both real — but it reframes where new users actually come from. Direct was roughly flat this cycle (-1.6%) even as Google paid was cut, which fits the picture: much of Direct is existing-user lifecycle traffic (returns to /user/add/, logins, second-device installs) that doesn't move with acquisition spend.

03 — AI Referrals Deep Dive

AI Search in the US Market

AI referral clicks fell sharply this period — 481 US sessions over 14 days, down -31% from 700. The drop is led by ChatGPT coming off its late-May high (42.1 → 28.8/day, -32%) and by Copilot giving back last cycle's spike (3.2 → 0.8/day, -75%); ChatGPT still dominates at ~84% of US AI traffic. The counter-signal is that this happened while the LLM Visibility Score hit new highs (below) — RoomSketcher is being recommended more across the LLMs but clicked through less, consistent with more answers resolving in-chat (zero-click). The only engine up on clicks is Perplexity (1.8 → 2.1/day).

Data source: Google Analytics 4 (property 346957354), sessionSource dimension by sessions metric, filtered to country = United States. AI sources identified by the following sessionSource values: chatgpt.com (ChatGPT), gemini.google.com (Gemini), copilot.com (Microsoft Copilot), perplexity.ai + perplexity (Perplexity, summed), claude.ai (Claude). Period: June 15 – June 28, 2026 (14 days). Microsoft Copilot AI-citation export (Bing Webmaster AI Performance) was not available this issue — the citation-level rows are carried/omitted and noted as not-tracked for this cycle.

ChatGPT

403 (83.8%)

Perplexity

30 (6.2%)

Gemini

29 (6.0%)

Copilot

11 (2.3%)

Claude

8 (1.7%)

Clicks Down, Still Dominant

ChatGPT Fell to 403 US Sessions (-32%) Even as Its LLM Recommendation Held #1

ChatGPT gave back last cycle's gain and more — 589 → 403 sessions (daily 42.1 → 28.8, -32%) — pulling total AI referral down -31%. The notable part: this happened in the same fortnight ChatGPT continued to name RoomSketcher its #1 on both anchor queries (LLM table below). So the click decline is not a recommendation decline — it's most consistent with more users getting a complete answer in-chat and not clicking through (zero-click). The level to watch is ~29/day; a drop toward the February pre-step floor (~27/day) would turn this from "answers resolving in-chat" into a genuine surface loss. ChatGPT still routes ~84% of US AI click-throughs, so the concentration remains the favorable kind.

AI Mix Shift

Copilot Gave Back Its Spike (3.2 → 0.8/day, -75%); Perplexity Was the Only Engine Up

Last cycle's Copilot jump did not hold — Microsoft Copilot fell 45 → 11 sessions (3.2 → 0.8/day, -75%), confirming it as noise off a tiny base rather than a trend, which is why single-cycle moves on the secondary engines carry a "too small to interpret" flag in the scorecard. Perplexity was the only engine up (25 → 30, 1.8 → 2.1/day, +19%) — small, but it lines up with Perplexity flipping RoomSketcher to its outright #1 on both LLM queries this cycle (below). Gemini held flat (2.1/day) and Claude eased to floor. None of the secondary engines is individually large enough to interpret alone; the signal worth carrying is Perplexity inching up on both clicks and recommendation.

AEO Note

Perplexity Ticked Up but Stays Capped — the Reddit Constraint Is Still the Lever

Perplexity rose to 30 US sessions (2.1/day) but remains range-bound where it has sat for five cycles. Its citation graph is heavily Reddit-weighted (~47% of citations across major Perplexity studies). RoomSketcher's Reddit presence (u/roomsketcher_sean, a verified account) is live but thin — 3 disclosed "I work at RoomSketcher" comments in r/floorplan (most recent May 15, 2026) and no active posts. r/floorplan is the single most citation-relevant sub for floor-plan queries, so the presence is the right move, but at 3 comments it is far below the volume Perplexity's citation graph needs. Perplexity's citation graph updates slowly (typically 6–8 weeks), so this is the channel most likely to move next, if it moves — and the LLM-score flip to #1 this cycle suggests the recommendation is already there even if the click volume hasn't followed. A structural channel constraint, not a content problem.

AEO Opportunity

~84% ChatGPT Concentration Makes the AEO Formatting Pass Higher Leverage Still

With ChatGPT ~84% of US AI traffic, the AEO formatting pass on the top citation-target pages (floor-plan-symbols, electrical-symbols, ada-bathroom-requirements, floor-plan-dimensions, gross-floor-area-gfa) compounds the dominant surface directly rather than shoring up the smaller engines. The content patterns are the same as before — FAQ schema, structured Q&A blocks, clean H2/H3 headlines, table-formatted lists — and the same structured Q&A is what earns the AI-Overview citations the blog how-to pages are now losing blue links to (Section 8). With AI clicks dipping while AI recommendation rises, formatting pages so the answer requires a click-through (interactive tools, full template galleries, downloadable detail) is the way to recapture some of the zero-click loss. Carried as Action #5.

LLM Visibility Score — the OKR 2 AI-Ranking KR (NYC — fresh reading, June 29)

Separate from the click-through traffic above, this is Jo's direct measure of whether the LLMs recommend RoomSketcher. Each of two anchor queries is run biweekly (NYC, fresh chats) across six LLMs and scored 0 (absent) / 0.25 (mentioned, not listed) / 0.5 (listed) / 0.75 (#1 in a category) / 1.0 (definite #1 recommendation); the query score is the sum ÷ 6.0. Reading captured June 28–29, 2026 (NYC VPN, fresh/temporary chat per query; screenshots in audit/llm-visibility/2026-06-28/). The "software" query jumped from 79.2% to 95.8% (4.75 → 5.75/6) as both Gemini and Perplexity flipped RoomSketcher to their outright #1 / "gold standard"; "creator" held a perfect 100% (wins all six). Per-engine scores below; the prior June 15 reading is the comparison.

LLM	"best floorplan software"	"best floor plan creator"
ChatGPT	1.0	1.0
Google AI Mode	1.0	1.0
Microsoft Copilot	1.0	1.0
Gemini	1.0	1.0
Perplexity	1.0	1.0
Claude	0.75	1.0
Score (sum ÷ 6.0) — June 29 reading (vs June 15)	5.75 → 95.8% (was 79.2%)	6.0 → 100% (flat)

OKR 2 — Breakthrough

The "Software" Term Jumped to 95.8% — Gemini and Perplexity Both Flipped to RoomSketcher #1

"best floorplan software" — the long-standing soft spot — jumped from 79.2% to 95.8% (4.75 → 5.75/6), its best reading on record. The two engines that had been holding it back both flipped: Gemini 0.5 → 1.0 (now "Best Overall / Real Estate … the gold standard") and Perplexity 0.5 → 1.0 (now "Best overall for most users: RoomSketcher"). Only Claude still hedges (0.75 — names RoomSketcher the "best all-around" pick but adds a "take the superlative with a grain of salt" caveat; one to re-confirm next reading). This is the single biggest OKR 2 move in the report — and it rhymes precisely with classic search, where "floor plan software" climbed 14.5 → 9.5 onto page 1 the same cycle (Section 4). When the LLM and GSC signals move together on the same term, it's usually a real positioning shift, not noise.

OKR 2 — Strength Held

RoomSketcher Is Still the Named #1 "Floor Plan Creator" in All 6 LLMs — a Perfect 100%

The "creator" query held 100% (6.0/6) for a second straight reading — ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity all return RoomSketcher as the explicit best-overall creator ("the safe default," "gold standard," "Best Overall"). On the exact term the Floor Plan Creator initiative targets, every AI surface tested recommends RoomSketcher #1, and it has now sustained that across a full cycle. It still diverges from classic search, where "floor plan creator" sits at ~20 in Google (Section 4, improving from ~24) — the LLMs remain well ahead of Google's blue links on this term, the better place to be leading as AI discovery grows. With both anchor terms now at or near max in the LLMs, the next OKR 2 question is whether to add a third, harder anchor query (e.g. "floor plan app" or a persona-specific term) to keep the metric diagnostic.

04 — Keyword Expansion Opportunity

Keyword Expansion Opportunity (US) — OKR 2 Detail

The head terms improved again this cycle, and the organic impression slide finally flattened. "floor plan software" climbed 14.5 → 9.5 (onto page 1), "best floor plan software" 9.8 → 8.6, "floor plan creator" 24.1 → 19.9; "floor plan maker" held at ~25 and "floor plan app" slipped 10.5 → 11.9. Crucially, total organic impressions were roughly flat this cycle (-0.8% vs last; daily avg ~108k both windows) after months of decline — the first sign the footprint contraction is bottoming. Aggregate position drifted a touch (9.68 → 9.88) even as the head terms rose, so the long tail is still where any softness sits — but the terms that matter most are now clearly recovering.

Head-Term Position Movement (US GSC, 14 days)

All seven anchor terms re-pulled fresh this cycle (US, exact-match query filter). Impressions/clicks are the exact-term row over the current 13-day GSC window.

Head Term	Current Impressions	Current Clicks	Current Position	Last-Period Position	Δ
"floor plan software"	511	10	~9.5	~14.5	+5.0 ↑
"best floor plan software"	295	8	~8.6	~9.8	+1.2 ↑
"floor plan creator"	425	9	~19.9	~24.1	+4.2 ↑
"free floor plan creator"	1,271	32	~3.2	~7.8	+4.6 ↑
"floor plan app"	380	8	~11.9	~10.5	-1.4 ↓
"floor plan maker"	241	2	~25.0	~25.1	Flat
"easy floor plan maker"	270	13	~13.3	~8.0	-5.3 ↓

OKR 2 — Recovery

Head Terms Improved Again and the Impression Slide Flattened

This is the most encouraging organic reading in several cycles. "floor plan software" climbed two cycles running (17.2 → 14.5 → 9.5) and is now on page 1; "floor plan creator" 24.1 → 19.9; "best floor plan software" 9.8 → 8.6; "free floor plan creator" sits at ~3. Just as important, total impressions stopped falling — roughly flat at ~108k/day (-0.8% vs last) after a months-long slide. The footprint contraction that dominated the last two issues appears to be bottoming. It is one cycle, so not yet a confirmed reversal, and aggregate position drifted slightly (9.68 → 9.88) which says the long tail is still soft — but the trajectory on the terms that matter is now clearly up. The page- and query-cluster impression decomposition is still worth running (Action #3) to confirm the stabilization is broad, not concentrated in a few pages.

OKR 2 — Follow-Through Progressing

/floor-plan-creator/ Is Climbing — 24.1 → 19.9 — but Hasn't Earned the Head Term Yet

The dedicated page shipped in Issue #4 remains live and indexed, and "floor plan creator" moved up a full four positions this cycle (24.1 → 19.9) — the first clear climb since launch — but it still hasn't earned the unbranded head term outright and remains out-ranked by the comparison/blog pages for the exact phrase. The follow-through prescribed earlier — internal links from the homepage, /features/draw-floor-plans/, /blog/best-floor-plan-software-tools/, /features/ai-convert/, and /features/roomsketcher-app/ — is still the lever to transfer enough internal authority to consolidate the URL onto the head term. The LLMs already rank RoomSketcher #1 for "creator" (Section 3), so this is a classic-search follow-through, not a positioning gap. The two terms with no dedicated page — "floor plan maker" (~25) and "floor plan app" (slipped to ~11.9) — remain the laggards, which is the clearest argument for a dedicated "maker" page. Carried as Action #3.

Methodology Note

Position Figures Are Exact-Match; Aggregate Impressions Are Date-Level

The per-term position, impressions, and clicks in the table are the exact-phrase rows from GSC's query export (US, current 13-day window), so they are reliable for the head terms shown. The aggregate "impressions roughly flat (-0.8%)" figure is taken from date-level GSC totals, which are not subject to the 25,000-row query-export cap and are the reliable basis for the cycle-over-cycle comparison. Two minor terms moved against the trend — "floor plan app" (10.5 → 11.9) and "easy floor plan maker" (8.0 → 13.3) — both in the maker/app family that still has no dedicated landing page.

05 — Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Landscape

The competitive structure is unchanged from last cycle, and it sharpens why the head-term slip matters: Planner 5D continues to lead hard on AI (AI Floor Plan Converter, AI Floorplan Recognition, AI Room Design, all promoted on the homepage), while Cedreo holds dedicated creator/maker pages with no AI. RoomSketcher sits between them — it has the dedicated page and a strong AI product (AI Convert), but neither is winning the head terms right now.

Who Ranks for Key US Terms

Competitor	"Floor Plan Creator" Page	"Floor Plan Maker" Page	AI Features	Key Differentiator
Planner 5D	Yes — H1 "Free Floor Plan Creator Software"	No	AI Floor Plan Converter, AI Floorplan Recognition, AI Room Design, AI Interior Design	7,000+ objects, mobile-first, AI-forward homepage — most AI-aggressive competitor
Cedreo	Yes — `/floor-plans/floor-plan-creator/`	Blueprint Maker page	None promoted (speed-focused: "draw a house in 2 hours")	Professional 3D, builder/remodeler-focused
SmartDraw	Yes — "Free Floor Plan Creator"	No	"Works with ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or something else"	US-based, 1,000+ templates; LLM-agnostic AI-hybrid positioning
Floorplanner	No (uses "floor planner" branding)	No	Unknown	30M+ users, browser-based
Homestyler	No (generic page)	No	Yes	Autodesk-backed, rendering
Canva	No (generic "floor plans")	No	AI tools	Massive brand, design suite
Matterport	N/A	N/A	Reality capture	Different approach entirely
RoomSketcher	Yes — `/floor-plan-creator/`	No — US position ~25.0 (~25.1 last)	AI Convert	#1 overall per multiple reviews

What Changed This Period

Competitive Pressure

Planner 5D Is the Sharpest Threat on Both SEO and AI Discovery

Planner 5D pairs an exact-match H1 ("Free Floor Plan Creator Software") with the most aggressive AI feature set in the category — this cycle its homepage promotes four distinct AI capabilities (AI Floor Plan Converter, AI Floorplan Recognition, AI Room Design, AI Interior Design). That combination is why it is the most direct competitor on both fronts the OKRs care about: traditional head-term ranking and the "get recommended by an LLM" GEO goal, because AI-feature-dense pages get described and cited more readily by ChatGPT and Perplexity. RoomSketcher's AI Convert is a genuinely strong proof point, but it is one feature messaged on a feature page, versus Planner 5D's four features on the homepage. This is the gap to close on the OKR 2 timeline.

Competitive Refinement

Cedreo Still Leans on Speed, Not AI — an Opening

Cedreo continues to position on speed and professional output ("the only 3D home design software to draw a complete house in just 2 hours") with no AI features promoted on its homepage. It holds a dedicated /floor-plan-creator/ page and a Blueprint Maker page, so it competes on the head terms, but it is not competing on AI discovery at all. That's an opening: in the AI-answer surfaces where Planner 5D is strong, Cedreo is effectively absent, and RoomSketcher's AI Convert can occupy that space if the AI messaging is surfaced more prominently (homepage, not just /features/ai-convert/).

Strength Holds

RoomSketcher Still #1 in Multiple US "Best Of" Lists

Editorial dominance held and the buyer-intent term improved. RoomSketcher's own comparison page for "best floor plan software" climbed to ~8.6 this cycle (from ~9.8), solidly on page 1, and brand + AI Convert search variants continue to hold position 1. The editorial and brand foundation is intact, and the non-brand head terms recovered this cycle too (Section 4) — the more contestable, competitor-pressured part of the footprint is moving the right way for the first time in several cycles.

06 — Strengths to Protect

What's Working Well (US)

This was a strong cycle on the things that compound. Three wins stand out — the GEO breakthrough on "software," the head-term recovery in classic search, and a funnel that rose even as paid was cut. (The one paid concern — blended CAC — is in Section 8.)

Strength — Breakthrough

The LLM Visibility Score Had Its Best Cycle — "Software" Jumped to 95.8%, "Creator" Perfect 100%

On the fresh June 29 capture, "best floorplan software" — the long-standing soft spot — jumped from 79.2% to 95.8% as Gemini and Perplexity both flipped RoomSketcher to their outright #1 / "gold standard," and "best floor plan creator" held a perfect 100% (wins all six LLMs). This is the durable asset as AI discovery grows: being the name the model hands back. It also leads classic search on both terms, and — the tell that it's real — the GSC head terms moved the same direction the same cycle (Section 4). Protecting this means keeping the citation-target pages well-formatted (Action #5) and watching Claude, the one engine still hedging on "software."

Strength — Recovery

Head Terms Recovered and the Organic Impression Slide Flattened

"floor plan software" reached page 1 (14.5 → 9.5), "best floor plan software" 9.8 → 8.6, "floor plan creator" 24.1 → 19.9 — two consecutive cycles of head-term improvement — and total organic impressions stopped falling (roughly flat, -0.8%) after a months-long decline. The brand and editorial foundation that held through the soft cycles (RoomSketcher still #1 in multiple US "best of" lists) is now being joined by the more contestable non-brand cohort moving up. One cycle doesn't confirm a reversal, but it's the most encouraging organic reading in months.

Strength — Resilience

The All-Source Funnel Rose While Google Paid Was Cut

GA4 all-source sign_up rose +9.2% and purchase +9.5% this cycle even though Google-Ads-attributed free signups fell ~29% — organic and Bing more than filled the gap left by the Google pullback. That's the clearest evidence the channel mix is resilient: the top of the funnel does not depend on Google paid volume to hold. Purchases hitting the strongest reading of the tracked period (33.6/day) while paid was being cut is the reassuring part — the users still arriving are converting at least as well.

07 — Site Performance & Homepage

Marketing Site Performance Audit

Values carried forward from June 15; fresh PSI re-run pending. The PageSpeed Insights API hit its daily query quota during this run, so the homepage Lighthouse figures below are the June 15 medians, not a fresh capture — the mobile regression they describe (Lighthouse 66 → 60, LCP 8.4s → 13.1s; desktop held at 96) is therefore unverified this cycle and remains the open item until re-measured. A fresh mobile+desktop run is the first task of the next cycle (and an early-in-the-day run, before the quota is consumed elsewhere). The likely root cause is unchanged: render-blocking CSS delaying first paint (detail and Action #1 below).

Mobile Performance

Carried — re-run pending

Mobile LCP

13.1s

Carried — "poor" band

Desktop Performance

Carried (held prior)

SEO Score

100

Technical SEO clean

Method: values carried forward from the June 15 capture (median of 5 mobile + 5 desktop PSI runs against https://www.roomsketcher.com/) because the PSI API returned a daily-quota 429 on every attempt this run. Carried medians: Mobile Perf 60, LCP 13.1s, FCP 3.8s, TBT 168ms, CLS 0.014; Desktop Perf 96, LCP 0.6s, FCP 0.3s, TBT 150ms, CLS 0.006; Accessibility 97, SEO 100. Treat the mobile regression as open-and-unverified until a fresh run confirms whether it persists or has been resolved.

Regression — Root Cause

Render-Blocking CSS Is Holding Mobile LCP at 13.1s

The mobile LCP element is the homepage hero thumbnail (img.dk-bci-thumbnail). It downloads early (eager, fetchpriority="high"), but its render is delayed: the page head loads 9 render-blocking stylesheets that must resolve before first paint. PSI flags the theme styles.css (~0.7s), WordPress block-library/style.min.css (~1.0s), and several plugin stylesheets (gallery, selling-points, factbox, BCI view.css) — so the already-downloaded hero can't paint until they finish. Mobile CPU/network throttling magnifies this into the 13.1s LCP; desktop (unthrottled, 0.6s) is unaffected. TBT is low (~170ms), so the bottleneck is the CSS render path, not JavaScript.

Action #1: reduce render-blocking CSS — inline the critical above-the-fold CSS and defer/async the non-critical plugin stylesheets. Ask the WP team whether a recent plugin/theme update added stylesheets to the head, the likely cause of the 8.4s → 13.1s move. Minor secondary win: tighten the hero sizes attribute so mobile selects the 430w source instead of 768w (~26 KB). Add a standing PSI check to the biweekly. Head terms recovered this cycle (Section 4) despite this, so speed isn't the dominant organic driver — but Core Web Vitals is a ranking input we don't want compounding the impression decline.

Holding

Desktop, CLS, SEO and Accessibility All Still Strong

Desktop 96, CLS clean (mobile 0.014 / desktop 0.006), Accessibility 97, SEO 100 — all within good thresholds. The regression is isolated to mobile load performance (LCP/TBT), which is what makes it likely a single reverted setting rather than a broad change.

08 — Gaps & Risks

What Needs Help (US)

Items that show up in the data this cycle as concerns or untapped levers, ordered by urgency. Two things lead: (1) paid blended CAC rose sharply — spend was scaled up ~56% (a Bing doubling) while total paid conversions fell ~15%, so cost-per-conversion went ~$35 → ~$64; and (2) the mobile site-speed regression, still open and unverified this cycle (Section 7). The OKR 2 organic picture improved — head terms recovered and the impression slide flattened — so it moves from "primary risk" to "confirm the stabilization."

OKR 1 — Primary Concern

Paid Spend Scaled Up ~56% but Conversions Fell ~15% — Blended CAC Rose ~$35 to ~$64

This cycle's paid reallocation went the wrong way for the "more subs at lower CAC" objective. Google US spend was cut -27% (Search NORAM -61%, Competitors -42%) and partly pushed into P-Max (+46%); on Google, conversions fell -31%. At the same time Bing US spend nearly doubled ($3,987 → $7,518/day, +89%), scaling Search (+118% spend), Competitors and Branded. The net across both engines: combined daily spend rose ~$5.5k → ~$8.6k (+56%) while combined conversions fell ~157 → ~134/day (-15%) — so blended cost-per-conversion rose from ~$35 to ~$64, and combined New Subscriptions held roughly flat (~10.6/day). The per-campaign conversion deltas show the reshuffle:

Campaign (US, conv Δ vs last)	Google	Bing
Branded	-18.1%	+38.8%
Search	-60.0%	+88.9%
Competitors	-54.8%	+32.8%
P-Max	+51.0%	off tiny base

The Bing scale-up did buy more Bing conversions (+72%), but at a slightly worse Bing CPA ($159 → $174) and on expensive lines — Bing Competitors converts at ~$351 CPA and Branded at ~$293. Google's cheap-per-conversion volume (mostly free signups at ~$12/conv) was cut at the same time, so the mix tilted toward the costlier engine. None of this is an auction loss — it's a deliberate budget decision — but at the blended level it raised CAC materially without lifting subscriptions. Action #2 is to confirm the Bing scale-up and Google pullback are intentional and decide whether the higher blended CAC is an accepted cost of a Bing test or a signal to rebalance back toward Google's cheaper conversion volume. (Note: Google spend is NOK, Bing USD; combined figures convert NOK at ~0.091.)

OKR 2 — Stabilizing, Confirm

The Organic Impression Slide Flattened This Cycle — Head Terms Recovered

The multi-month organic footprint contraction that led the last two issues appears to be bottoming. Impressions were roughly flat this cycle (~108k/day, -0.8% vs last) after months of decline, clicks were flat-to-up (+0.5%), and the tracked head terms improved again (software 14.5 → 9.5 onto page 1, creator 24.1 → 19.9; Section 4). Aggregate position drifted slightly (9.68 → 9.88), so the long tail is still soft, but the steady downward slope has paused. This is one cycle, so it is "confirm," not "declare victory":

Section (US, impr/day) — prior-cycle decomposition (carried context)	Earlier	Later	Δ
/blog/ (how-to articles)	52,155	33,649	-36%
/floor-plan-gallery/	16,090	12,868	-20%
/features/	5,528	3,581	-35%
Homepage	2,863	2,750	-4%

The mechanism identified earlier still fits: most of the prior loss was high-impression, near-zero-CTR blog queries that AI Overviews now absorbs — impressions that never converted (clicks and purchases barely moved throughout). With the May 2026 core update fully rolled out and impressions now flat, the Action #3 page- and query-cluster decomposition is worth running once more to confirm the stabilization is broad (not propped up by a few pages) and to decide, per blog cluster, whether to compete for the AI-Overview citation or reallocate the content effort. The gallery is the one bright spot inside this: gallery impressions actually rose +16%/day this cycle (see the duplicate-meta item below).

OKR 3 — Positive Reconciliation

Top-of-Funnel Rose Even as Google Paid Was Cut

The reassuring reconciliation this cycle: GA4 all-source sign_up rose +9.2% and purchase +9.5% even though Google-Ads-attributed free signups fell ~29% (Google Free Personal 1,452 → 1,036). Organic and Bing more than filled the gap left by the Google pullback — the top of the funnel does not depend on Google paid volume to hold. Purchases reached the strongest reading of the tracked period (33.6/day) while paid was being cut, so the users still arriving convert at least as well. This is the clearest evidence the channel mix is resilient; the thing to keep watching is whether it still holds if the paid pullback deepens further, with the free→paid cohort rate as the right instrument.

Carried Forward

Bing Webmaster — Duplicate Gallery Meta Still Pending (Gallery Now Growing)

The ~801 pages with identical meta descriptions / ~797 with identical titles flagged in prior cycles — almost certainly the template gallery (~796 gallery pages received US impressions this period, broadly flat vs last) — remain unresolved (Bing Webmaster flags carried; no fresh export this cycle). The reason to act on it now is that the gallery turned a corner this cycle: gallery impressions rose +16%/day (11,214 → 13,004/day) even as clicks dipped slightly (-5%/day), so impressions are growing but the CTR is being held back — exactly the symptom duplicate/templated titles and metas produce. Pattern-based templated metadata (e.g. "{Template Name} Floor Plan — {Sq Ft} sq ft, {Bedrooms} BR | RoomSketcher") via WordPress template logic clears hundreds of pages in one pass and would convert that rising impression base into clicks. Carried as Action #6.

Carried Forward

Affiliate Pilot + FloorCapture Comparisons — Still Not Visible to Search

Zero US query impressions for "affiliate" or "floorcapture" again this cycle; /affiliate/ remains externally undetectable. These initiatives are still pending from a search-discovery perspective. No change since Issue #3/#4 — flagged here only so it doesn't fall off the list.

Longer-Horizon Lever

The Brand Reddit Account's Visible Footprint Is Tiny — Organic Citations Are the Real Lever

A direct pull of the brand account (u/roomsketcher_sean, verified) this cycle shows just 3 disclosed "I work at RoomSketcher" comments in r/floorplan (Jan, Apr, and May 15, 2026) and zero visible posts. One data point worth flagging, without over-reading it: the account's karma (7,722 link, 530 comment) is far higher than that visible footprint, which means earlier posts/comments existed but are no longer publicly visible — whether self-deleted or removed by moderators is not determinable from the public API, so we shouldn't assume. The strategic point holds either way: only publicly visible content can be cited by Perplexity's or ChatGPT's crawlers, and right now that's 3 comments. So the durable GEO lever is not the brand account — it's earning organic, third-party mentions (real users recommending RoomSketcher) and contributing genuinely helpful answers. The four largest design subs (r/InteriorDesign, r/RealEstate, r/HomeImprovement, r/architecture) have no presence yet, and Quora — Perplexity's parallel citation graph — is entirely absent. This is a Section 8 longer-horizon item, not a two-week action; it's the lever most likely to move Perplexity over the next 1–2 cycles if the team chooses to invest.

09 — Industry & Market

Market Context

No new market-size data this cycle — carrying forward the category baseline. Two industry-trend reads worth noting given the Q2 OKRs and this cycle's data.

Market Size (2024)

~$1.2B

Floor plan software category

Projected (2032–33)

$2.5–3.5B

8–9 year forecast range

CAGR

9.5–12.5%

Compound annual growth rate

Market Trend

AI-Feature Density on the Homepage Is Becoming the Category Standard

Planner 5D now promotes four distinct AI features on its homepage; SmartDraw messages LLM-agnostic AI compatibility; Canva and Homestyler both list AI tools. The category is converging on "AI features visible above the fold on the homepage," not buried on a feature page. RoomSketcher's AI Convert is a stronger product proof point than most of what competitors are messaging, but it lives on /features/ai-convert/ rather than the homepage. Surfacing it more prominently is both an SEO/GEO move (AI-dense pages get cited more by LLMs) and a positioning move — it's the natural pairing with the OKR 3 "Credentialing Update."

Industry Signal

ChatGPT Citation Concentration Mirrors the Broader Web

RoomSketcher's AI referral mix this cycle (ChatGPT 84%, Perplexity 6%, Gemini 6%, Copilot 2%, Claude 2%) still mirrors the broader B2C web in mid-2026 — ChatGPT remains the dominant click-through surface even with AI referral volume down across the board. Last cycle's Copilot spike fully reversed (3.2 → 0.8/day), confirming it as noise off a tiny base; Perplexity edged into the #2 click slot and was the only engine up. The OKR 2 implication is unchanged: AEO investment compounds in ChatGPT first; the other engines are smaller, slower wins — though the LLM-recommendation wins this cycle (Gemini and Perplexity flipping to #1 on "software") show the recommendation surface can move well ahead of the click volume.

Algorithm Context

The May 2026 Core Update Has Finished Rolling Out — Positions Recovered, Breadth Stabilized

Google's May 2026 core update (announced May 21, a "helpful content" update demoting generic informational summaries) has now completed its rollout, so this is the clean post-update read — and the second consecutive cycle to read it. The result improved: RoomSketcher's tracked head-term positions recovered again (Section 4), and total impressions — which had fallen for months — finally flattened this cycle (-0.8%). The breadth contraction appears to be bottoming rather than continuing. The structural backdrop is unchanged: definitional how-to queries are increasingly answered by Google's AI Overviews, so those impressions don't return to blue links — but the bleeding has slowed. The strategic response is to confirm the stabilization with the per-cluster decomposition (Action #3) and decide, per blog cluster, whether to compete for the AI-Overview citation or reallocate the effort.

Positioning

A Genuinely Strong Discovery Cycle — with One Paid Question to Resolve

The compounding assets all moved the right way this cycle: the LLM Visibility Score on "software" jumped to 95.8% (Gemini and Perplexity flipping to #1), "creator" held a perfect 100%, the GSC head terms recovered onto page 1, the organic impression slide flattened, and the all-source funnel rose even as Google paid was cut. That is the strongest discovery reading in months. The one thing that needs resolving rather than applause is paid: spend scaled ~56% (a Bing doubling) while conversions fell ~15%, so blended CAC rose to ~$64 — a deliberate reallocation whose intent and value need confirming (Action #2). The mobile speed regression also remains open and unverified (Section 7). Net: discovery is winning; the work this cycle is to make sure paid spend is pulling its weight behind it.

10 — Next Steps Before July 13

Next Steps Before Next Call

Action items to run before the next biweekly call (July 13, 2026). Each is tagged with the Q2 OKR objective it serves. Ordered roughly by sequence — items 1–3 are confirmations/diagnostics that unblock the read on the rest.

OBJ 1OBJ 2KWORQ — Re-Run PageSpeed (Quota-Blocked This Cycle), Then Confirm the Mobile Fix

The PSI API hit its daily quota during this run, so the mobile-speed regression (Lighthouse 60, LCP 13.1s carried from June 15) is unverified this cycle — the first task is simply to re-run mobile+desktop early in the next cycle and establish whether the regression persists or has already been resolved. If it persists, the driver is render-blocking CSS (9 stylesheets in the page head); ask the WP team whether a recent plugin/theme update added sheets to the head, then inline critical CSS and defer/async the non-critical plugin sheets (Section 7). Kworq will add a standing PSI check to the biweekly so the next regression surfaces in days, not a cycle later.

Owner: Kworq + RoomSketcher WP admin | Outcome: fresh PSI read; mobile LCP confirmed and, if needed, back under ~4s | Protects OKR 1 (Quality Score) + OKR 2 (ranking)

OBJ 1Confirm the Bing Scale-Up / Google Pullback Is Intentional — and Decide on Blended CAC

The defining paid move this cycle: Bing US spend nearly doubled ($3,987 → $7,518/day, +89%) while Google was cut -27% and pushed into P-Max. Combined spend rose ~56% but total conversions fell ~15%, so blended CAC went ~$35 → ~$64 and subscriptions held flat (Section 8). Three questions for the account team: (1) Was the Bing scale-up and Google pullback deliberate (a test) or drift? (2) Is the higher blended CAC an accepted cost — the new Bing spend leaned on expensive lines (Competitors ~$351 CPA, Branded ~$293) while cheap Google volume (~$12/conv) was cut? (3) Should budget rebalance back toward Google's cheaper conversion volume, or does Bing Search (the one clearly efficient new line, ~$97 CPA) justify holding the scale? Also glance at Branded on both engines for competitor brand-bidding.

Owner: RoomSketcher paid media team + Kworq | Outcome: clear decision on the Bing scale-up and a blended-CAC target | Direct OKR 1 KR

OBJ 2KWORQ — Confirm the Organic Stabilization by Page & Query Cluster

Impressions flattened this cycle (-0.8%) after months of decline and the head terms recovered (Section 4) — the footprint contraction appears to be bottoming. The diagnostic is now about confirming that, not explaining a decline. Kworq will pull GSC at the page and query-cluster level to check that the stabilization is broad (not propped up by a few pages) and to produce a short "defend / let-go / re-target" list per blog cluster — separating low-CTR definitional terms ceding to AI Overviews from ground worth defending. This turns a one-cycle flattening into a content decision and a baseline to watch next cycle.

Owner: Kworq + RoomSketcher analytics | Outcome: confirmation the stabilization is broad + a per-cluster defend/let-go list | OKR 2

OBJ 2Push Internal Links to /floor-plan-creator/ and Tighten the H1

The dedicated page is live and indexed and the head term climbed four positions this cycle (24.1 → 19.9) — the first clear move since launch — but it still hasn't earned the term outright, and the LLMs already rank RoomSketcher #1 for "creator," so this is a classic-search follow-through. Internal-link authority is the remaining lever to consolidate it. Add in-content links to the page from the homepage, /features/draw-floor-plans/, /blog/best-floor-plan-software-tools/, /features/ai-convert/, and /features/roomsketcher-app/; and change the H1 to "Free Floor Plan Creator" to match Planner 5D's exact-match on the highest-intent variant.

Owner: RoomSketcher | Outcome: page starts pulling head-term authority within 1–2 cycles | Direct OKR 2

OBJ 2Add FAQ Schema & Q&A Blocks to Top 5 AEO Pages

Carried forward. Top citation-target pages: floor-plan-symbols, electrical-symbols, ada-bathroom-requirements, floor-plan-dimensions, gross-floor-area-gfa. With ChatGPT ~84% of US AI traffic, the AEO formatting pass (FAQ schema, structured Q&A, clean H2/H3, table-formatted lists) compounds the dominant channel — and the same structured Q&A is what wins the AI-Overview citations the blog pages are losing blue links to (Action #3). Five-page pilot first; scale to 20 if it shows measurable lift next cycle.

Owner: RoomSketcher | Outcome: AEO formatting on the highest-leverage pages | Supports OKR 2 "#1 in LLMs"

OBJ 2Fix Duplicate Titles & Meta Descriptions on the Template Gallery

Carried forward — and now more timely. Bing Webmaster still flags ~801 pages with identical meta descriptions and ~797 with identical titles — the template gallery (~796 gallery pages received US impressions this cycle). Gallery impressions rose +16%/day this cycle while clicks dipped slightly, the classic symptom of templated/duplicate metadata capping CTR on a growing impression base. Pattern-based templated metadata (e.g., "{Template Name} Floor Plan — {Sq Ft} sq ft, {Bedrooms} BR | RoomSketcher") resolves hundreds of pages at once via WordPress template logic and converts that rising impression base into clicks.

Owner: WP admin / SEO | Outcome: ~796 gallery pages with unique meta; turns rising gallery impressions into clicks | OKR 2 "Optimize FPG"

OBJ 2Keep the LLM Visibility Cadence — and Consider a Third Anchor Query

The June 29 capture is in and is the best yet (software 79.2% → 95.8%, creator 100%) — both anchor terms are now at or near max. Maintain the biweekly NYC cadence so the trend holds, and re-confirm the one soft cell next reading (Claude on "software," still 0.75 with a "grain of salt" hedge). Because both terms are nearly maxed, the metric is losing headroom to be diagnostic — consider adding a third, harder anchor query (e.g. "floor plan app" or a persona term like "floor plan software for real estate") so the score keeps showing movement as the easy wins top out.

Owner: Jo + Kworq | Outcome: OKR 2 KR stays current and diagnostic; software win confirmed durable | Direct OKR 2 KR

KWORQ — Resolve the Recurring "Unassigned" 940-Conversion Anomaly

For the third cycle running, GA4's Unassigned bucket carries ~1,459 sessions at an impossibly high conversion rate — existing-user conversions where GA4 lost the source but kept the user_id. It recurs every cycle, yet the channel scorecard can attribute none of it, so paid/organic credit is understated structurally. Kworq will run a GA4 Exploration on Unassigned-with-conversions broken down by user_id, landing page, and event_name to identify whether these belong to Email, Direct, or a custom channel, and propose the attribution fix. This also feeds the broader Direct attribution clean-up (360-share UTMs, ActiveCampaign email tagging, app ?source=app param).

Owner: Kworq + RoomSketcher analytics | Outcome: ~940 conversions/cycle correctly attributed; channel reporting becomes trustworthy | Cross-cuts all OKRs (measurement)

Appendix — Glossary

Terms Used in This Report

SEO = Search Engine Optimization — ranking in Google/Bing traditional search results.
AEO = Answer Engine Optimization — optimizing content to get cited by AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews).
GEO = Generative Engine Optimization — same goal as AEO, different name. Both describe getting your brand recommended in AI-generated answers.
GSC = Google Search Console — Google's tool showing how your site appears in search results (impressions, clicks, position).
FPG = Floor Plan Gallery — the /floor-plan-gallery/ section of the site (~796 template pages received US impressions this cycle).
LCP = Largest Contentful Paint — how long the main content of a page takes to appear. Google's most important speed metric ("good" ≤ 2.5s).
CLS = Cumulative Layout Shift — how much the page "jumps around" during loading.
TBT = Total Blocking Time — how long the main thread is blocked by JavaScript during load (proxy for interactivity).
CTR = Click-Through Rate — percentage of people who click after seeing your listing.
CPC = Cost Per Click — what you pay per click on ads.
CPA = Cost Per Acquisition — ad spend divided by conversions. If spend grows faster than conversions, CPA rises.
P-Max = Performance Max — AI-driven campaign type running across Search, Display, YouTube, and more.
OKR = Objectives & Key Results — the quarterly goal framework Jo's team uses (slide deck shared March '26).

RoomSketcher Growth Audit: The Outside View