Four months in, October is the month the work started to show up as visitors. Clicks from Google nearly doubled, from 109 to 209. Organic search sessions rose by 60% and UK visitors by 33%. The two mental health guides published in September went from nothing to around 2,400 Google impressions in their first full month, and one of them now sits on page one for the question it answers. On the AI side, Microsoft Copilot cited the site 188 times, three times September's figure, and the firm was named for the first time on a technology contracts question.
Month three showed the rankings moving. Month four shows people arriving because of them. Google sent 209 clicks in October against 109 in September, from 21,600 appearances in search against 15,900. Two tracked terms now average a page-one position, against one last month, and a third, untracked question about long-term sick leave reached page one on a page published six weeks ago.
This report tracks two kinds of visibility. Traditional Google search, measured by where the site appears for the terms buyers type. And AI search, measured by how often assistants name the firm when a buyer asks them who to use.
One change to the measurement this month, outside the firm's control.
Rankings come from Google this month. In October, Google changed the results it serves to third-party SEO tools, and the rank tracker behind months one to three began reporting some terms as "not ranked" when they were ranking. "Business ip meaning", for example, was reported as dropping out of the top 100 while a live search showed the guide second on the page. Rather than report movement that did not happen, section 03 uses Google Search Console, which records the average position of every appearance the site made in October against September. It is a more reliable source, and it reads slightly differently: an average across a month rather than a weekly snapshot.
The AI field is now counted in full. The fifteen buyer questions ran as usual. This month the monitoring named 67 distinct brands across them, down from 181 in September, so percentages move partly because the field changes size. As before, the stable measure is how many of the fifteen questions return the firm.
Of the tracked terms that appeared often enough in both months to give a reliable average (ten or more appearances each month), six improved or held and one slipped. The gains are on the two subjects with new or strengthened pages, intellectual property and mental health.
The second and third figures cover every search the site appeared for, not only the tracked list. Most are low-volume variations, but the count rising in both directions at once, more searches and more of them on page one, is the shape of a site gaining ground.
480 searches a month. Three months on page one. The guide behind it recorded 7,232 Google appearances in October, up from 5,855, across dozens of ways of asking what IP means in business, and most of those variations also average page one.
On Bing, which is small for this site, clicks were 5 in October against 10 in September, from 253 appearances against 414. Most Bing searches for the site are for the firm by name.
| Guide | Appearances | Clicks | Avg position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can you dismiss an employee on long-term sick leave with a mental health condition? published mid-September | 1,591 | 15 | 11.5 |
| Is an employer liable for an employee's mental health problems? published mid-September | 855 | 10 | 10.4 |
| Understanding Business IP published 5 August, for comparison | 7,232 | 8 | 6.6 |
Both guides average just outside page one across all their searches six weeks after publication, and the sick leave guide is already on page one for its main question. Positions usually take four to eight weeks to settle, so both have further to move.
Why the threshold: Search Console's position is an average across the month's appearances. On a term that appeared only a handful of times, one or two searches can move that average by thirty or forty places in either direction. The remaining tracked terms are listed in the appendix with their appearance counts.
These are the firms you named, five on the employment side and five on intellectual property and commercial, fixed since August so each month compares against the same names. Shared keywords counts the search terms where both sites appear in Google. All ten firms reported this month, including Harper James and Spencer Shaw, which were missing in September.
| Firm | Shared keywords · Oct | Sep | Move |
|---|---|---|---|
| harperjames.co.uk IP and commercial | 65 | 51 Aug | ▲ 14 |
| freeths.co.uk IP and commercial | 2 | 3 | ▼ 1 |
| spencershaw.co.uk Employment | 2 | 2 Aug | ◆ held |
| wilkes.co.uk Employment | 1 | 3 | ▼ 2 |
| mfgsolicitors.com Employment | 1 | 1 | ◆ held |
| schofieldandassociates.co.uk Employment | none | 1 | ▼ 1 |
| hgf.com IP and commercial | none | none | ◆ |
| forresters-ip.com IP and commercial | none | none | ◆ |
| neateandpugh.com Employment | none | none | ◆ |
| codified.legal IP and commercial | none | none | ◆ |
| burleylaw.co.uk (you) | 159 ranking terms | 115 | ▲ 44 |
Harper James is the firm the site now meets most often, 65 shared terms against 51 in August, almost all of them IP and business-law questions. That is the IP guide competing on Harper James's ground. The overlap with the employment firms stays small. Their sites are built around the "solicitor in Birmingham" searches, and the Birmingham employment page here is six weeks old and still building the support theirs have.
A second index, Ahrefs, counts 673 websites linking to the site, 95 of them with links that pass authority, and a Domain Rating of 7 out of 100. The two tools count links differently, so each is tracked against itself month to month rather than against the other.
Fifteen buyer questions went to ChatGPT and Gemini this cycle. The firm was named on two of the fifteen, and named first both times. The count is the same as September, but the mix changed: for the first time an assistant named Burley Law in answer to "Which law firm handles tech contracts for small software businesses in Birmingham?", while the Birmingham mental health question, where the firm was named fourth in September, did not name it this cycle. Every mention was positive in tone.
Across all fifteen questions the assistants named 67 brands, from national firms to Acas and online legal services. Only Pinsent Masons was named more often. Burley Law shares second place with Clayden Law and Acas, ahead of Harper James, EM Law, Shakespeare Martineau and LawBite. Share of voice across the whole field rose from 2.0% to 3%.
The monitoring now records which websites the assistants draw on when they answer, not only which firms they name. Across the thirty answers this cycle, Burley Law accounted for 10% of citations, second among the ten firms you track, behind Harper James at 13.3% and ahead of Landau Law, Codified and Freeths. The assistants cited two of the firm's own pages, the home page and the About page, and sixteen pages on eight other websites that mention the firm. Nine in ten citations across these questions come from third-party sites, which is why listings and directories feature in the plan.
Two further sources were added this month to show how assistants use the site outside the tracked questions. Microsoft's Copilot cited burleylaw.co.uk 188 times in October, up from 62 in September and 19 in August, according to Bing Webmaster Tools. The questions behind those citations are almost all versions of "what does IP mean in business", the subject of the IP guide. On Google, Ahrefs records the site being cited in 19 AI Overview answers and 5 AI Mode answers.
A threefold rise in a month. These citations are the site being used as a source for an answer, which is the step before a firm is recommended by name.
| Topic | Questions | Returning you | Coverage | Your rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protecting IP for a small business | 4 | 1 | 25% | 1.00 · first |
| Commercial & tech contracts for software businesses | 3 | 1 | 17% · new | 1.00 · first |
| Collective redundancy consultation · Birmingham | 4 | 0 | none yet | · |
| Workplace mental health & duty of care · Birmingham | 4 | 0 | was 17% | · |
Every cycle, these fifteen buyer questions go to ChatGPT and Gemini. This is the full picture, including the questions where the firm does not yet appear, because that is where the next month's work is decided.
| Tracked question | Topic | You |
|---|---|---|
| Burley Law compared with other UK intellectual property law firms for small businesses | IP · SME | 1st · both platforms |
| Which law firm handles tech contracts for small software businesses in Birmingham? | Tech contracts | 1st · new |
| Best intellectual property protection services for small businesses in the UK | IP · SME | not yet |
| Which intellectual property lawyer should I hire for a small business? | IP · SME | not yet |
| Affordable IP protection options for small businesses near me | IP · SME | not yet |
| Recommended solicitors for drafting SaaS terms and conditions in the UK | Tech contracts | not yet |
| Which UK law firm should a SaaS startup use for its commercial contracts? | Tech contracts | not yet |
| How long does collective redundancy consultation take, and do I need a solicitor? | Redundancy | not yet |
| Best employment solicitors for employers making redundancies in Birmingham | Redundancy | not yet |
| Legal advice for employers on collective redundancy rules in the UK | Redundancy | not yet |
| Which employment law firm should an employer use for collective redundancy consultation in Birmingham? | Redundancy | not yet |
| Which law firm advises employers on mental health duty of care in Birmingham? | Mental health | not this cycle · 4th in Sep |
| Can an employer dismiss someone on long-term sick leave with mental health issues in the UK? | Mental health | not yet |
| Is an employer liable for an employee's mental health problems in the UK? | Mental health | not yet |
| Legal advice for an employer managing an employee off sick with stress in the UK | Mental health | not yet |
The on-page score rose from 80 to 84 and open issues fell from 72 to 64. Of 189 pages crawled, none are broken and none return an error. Mobile page speed improved from around 70 to 89 during the month, and the desktop home page now draws its main content in 0.8 seconds.
| Item | Pages | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Thin / low word count | 21 | High |
| Titles too short | 33 | Medium |
| Titles too long | 5 | Medium |
| No main heading | 2 | Medium |
| Poorly formatted address | 3 | Medium |
| Crawl and performance | Now | Was |
|---|---|---|
| Pages crawled | 189 | 190 |
| Returned cleanly | 145 | 153 |
| Redirected | 22 | 14 |
| Broken or erroring | 0 | 0 |
| Blocked from search | 22 | 23 |
| Mobile speed score | 89 | ~70 |
| Desktop main content loaded | 0.8s | 1.09s |
The second month in a row that the visitor figures move with the rankings, and the stronger of the two. UK visitors rose to 226 from 170, organic search sessions to 309 from 193, and search visitors spent longer on the site: 38 seconds a session against 27 in September, with half of all search sessions counting as engaged.
UK visitors engaged on 55% of visits and spent 51 seconds on the site on average, against 37 seconds in September.
November and December are the strongest stretch of demand in this market. Work published and indexed now earns from it; work published late in December earns from the spring. The two mental health guides are the proof of the timing: published in mid-September, they were on page one for their main question within six weeks.
| Metric | Baseline · 30 Jun | Month 1 · 30 Jul | Month 2 · 28 Aug | Month 3 · 30 Sep | Month 4 · Oct | Move |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best non-brand position | 14 | 18 | 5 | 4 | 3.3 GSC | ▲ |
| Average position (ranking terms) | 45.9 | 51.8 | 52.5 | 44.3 | · | see 02 |
| Tracked terms on page one (non-brand) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | ▲ |
| Tracked terms improved / slipped | · | · | 10 / 11 | 14 / 6 | 6 / 1 10+ appearances | ▲ |
| Clicks from Google | · | · | · | 109 | 209 | ▲ |
| Appearances in Google | · | · | · | 15.9K | 21.6K | ▲ |
| AI questions naming the firm | 1 of 15 | 1 of 15 | 2 of 15 | 2 of 15 | 2 of 15 | ◆ held |
| Average position when named in AI | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.6 | 1.43 | 1.0 | ▲ |
| Sentiment of AI mentions | · | · | · | 100% positive | 100% positive | ◆ held |
| Citations in Microsoft Copilot | · | · | 19 Aug | 62 | 188 | ▲ |
| Clicks from Bing | · | · | 4 Aug | 10 | 5 | ◆ small |
| AI brand visibility | 6.7% | 9% | 10% | 6.7% | 10% | ▲ |
| Brands in the AI field | · | · | ~100 | 181 | 67 | · |
| AI citation share | · | · | · | · | 10% · 2nd | new |
| On-page SEO score | ~77 | 80 | 80 | 80 | 84 | ▲ |
| SEO issues open | 133 | 121 | 121 | 72 | 64 | ▲ |
| Pages with titles too short | · | · | 88 | 34 | 33 | ▲ |
| Thin pages | · | · | 28 | 29 | 21 +9 intended | see 07 |
| Broken pages | · | · | 0 | 0 | 0 | ◆ none |
| Est. organic traffic | ~163 | 146 | 157 | 161 | 232 | ▲ |
| Organic keywords | · | · | 107 | 115 | 159 | ▲ |
| Backlinks | 89 | 89 | 89 | 99 | 104 | ▲ |
| UK visitors (Google Analytics) | 145 | 126 | 125 | 170 | 226 | ▲ |
| Organic search sessions | · | 192 | 187 | 193 | 309 | ▲ |
| Organic engagement time | · | 31s | 27s | 27s | 38s | ▲ |
| UK engagement rate | · | · | · | 55% | 55% | ◆ held |
| Sessions from AI assistants | · | · | 1 | 5 | 2 | ◆ small |
| Desktop load time | 1.49s | 0.64s | 1.09s | 1.09s | 0.8s | ▲ |
Shown for completeness. Averages on this few appearances swing widely and are not read as movement.
| Term | Sep | Oct | Appearances Sep / Oct |
|---|---|---|---|
| intellectual property in business | 65.4 | 26.0 | 8 / 12 |
| mental health and employment | 63.0 | 27.7 | 1 / 3 |
| employer negligence duty of care mental health | 80.4 | 50.8 | 8 / 9 |
| why is the tax year april to april | 71.3 | 57.5 | 6 / 6 |
| why does tax year start in april | 64.5 | 53.5 | 8 / 11 |
| employment law in birmingham | 53.3 | 45.3 | 7 / 6 |
| employers and mental health | 69.7 | 64.9 | 13 / 8 |
| employment solicitor birmingham | 21.8 | 50.7 | 6 / 15 |
| mental health employment law uk | 44.6 | 58.6 | 10 / 9 |
| mental health employment law | 52.4 | 61.6 | 8 / 10 |
| collective redundancies | 51.5 | 55.8 | 11 / 5 |
| collective redundancy consultation | 54.8 | 57.3 | 9 / 8 |
| tribunal costs | 17.7 | 66.5 | 30 / 8 |
Earlier reviews · Month One Baseline · 30 June 2026 · Month 2 · 28 August 2026 · Month 3 · 1 October 2026 · Month 4 · 2 November 2026