Case Study: How We Doubled the Pages Google Shows in Three Weeks

In September 2026 we added 37 city pages to our own website, one for each town we serve. Google found them within days and then declined to show most of them. We rewrote all 55 of our city pages so each one was genuinely about its own town, and within three weeks of the update the number of our pages Google keeps in its results went from 42 to 83, and the number of times our site appeared in search doubled. This is what we found, what we changed and what we learned, using the real numbers from our monthly reports.

What went wrong?

Google's Search Console has an Indexing report that shows which of your pages Google keeps and why it leaves others out. A month after the new pages went live, it showed:

• Pages in Google: still about the same as before the new pages were added.
• 45 pages "Discovered, currently not indexed": Google knew they existed but had not bothered to read them.
• 10 pages "Crawled, currently not indexed": Google read them and chose to leave them out.

Over the same month, the number of times our site appeared in search fell by about 29%, sliding from roughly 284 a day to 133 a day.

Why would Google ignore pages?

We compared the pages to each other. After swapping out the town name, about half of the sentences on each city page were word for word the same as on every other city page. Google's guidelines warn specifically about near-identical pages that only change a place name, sometimes called doorway pages. When Google sees a batch of them it tends to skip most of them, and it can trust the rest of the site a little less too.

We could not prove from the data alone that this was the cause. But the fix was the right thing to do either way, because a page about a town should actually be about that town.

What did we change?

We rewrote all 55 city pages so each one stands on its own:

1. A unique opening answer written for that town's businesses.
2. Local facts: the county, nearby business districts and what the local economy looks like.
3. A short local plan specific to the kinds of businesses in that area.
4. Three questions and answers specific to that town.
5. The repeated service descriptions removed and replaced with a single row of links to the service pages.

We measured the result before publishing: shared sentences between city pages dropped from about 50% to 9%. Every page kept its place in the sitemap, with an updated date so Google would come back and read it again.

What happened next?

The pages Google keeps started climbing within days of the update and rose every week of October. Several town searches reached the first page of Google, including "web design grayson ga" (position 4), "cobb county web design" (4), "seo service hoschton" (5) and "web design services winder" (7).

What has not changed yet?

Honesty matters in a case study. Clicks are still small: 9 in October, because most of our searches still sit on page two or three, where very few people click. And 43 pages were still waiting to be read. Digging into that list taught us a second lesson.

The second lesson: one page, one address

Every page on our site could be reached at two addresses, with and without ".html" on the end. Our sitemap and page tags named one version, while a hosting setting rewrote the links between pages to point at the other. Google followed the links, found the second version, was told it was a copy, and left the first version waiting in line. Some pages even appeared in search under both addresses, competing with themselves. We switched the setting off so every signal points to the same address. If your site can be opened at more than one address, make sure your links, your sitemap and your page tags all agree.

What should you take from this?

• Location pages work, if each one is real. A page per town is a good strategy. A copy of one page with the town name swapped is not.
• Check the Indexing report, not just your rankings. It tells you which pages Google is quietly ignoring.
• Make sure each page has one address. Mixed signals cost you pages you have already paid to build.
• Expect visibility before clicks. Google showing you more often comes first; clicks follow as positions improve.

We build every location page this way for our clients. See an example on our Marietta web design page, or learn more about our local SEO services.