Epic Insights

Edition 25  ·  Jun 23, 2026

The Big Story

For years, ranking and revenue climbed together. Get to the top of Google for your main service, and the phone rang more. Now, that link is fraying. You can hold your spot and still watch calls slide, and the cause usually isn't your website slipping. It's the search itself changing shape.

Google increasingly answers the customer before they ever reach you. One Search Engine Land study found that about 65% of Google searches now end with no click at all, and for "near me" local searches it runs as high as 78%. People get your hours, your rating, a quick AI summary, or a competitor's name right there on the results page, and never click through. Sterling Sky's Joy Hawkins tracked 179 Business Profiles across 34 law firms over two years and saw the same pattern: calls drifting down even where rankings held firm.

Don't freak out! A quieter click count isn't always lost business. Plenty of times the customer still acted. They tapped "call," asked for directions, or read enough to decide, all without visiting your website. The action moved. It didn't vanish. Which means the number that tells you how you're really doing isn't your ranking anymore. It's how many people called, booked, or walked in.

So the move is to stop grading yourself on rank alone and start watching what actually pays the bills: calls, direction requests, form fills, booked jobs. Two things drive those now. A Google Business Profile that's complete and current, because for a lot of customers that profile is your storefront. And a website that makes it dead easy to act the second someone lands, a phone number they can tap, a form that works on a phone, hours they can trust. Rankings still matter. They're just the opening line of the story now, not the whole thing.

Quick Hits

Ask Epic

You already have most of what you need, and none of it costs extra. The belief that you'd need fancy software is the main thing in the way, so let's clear that out first.

Start with what Google already hands you. Your Business Profile shows how many people called, asked for directions, and visited your site, month over month. That alone might tell you more about your site health than your ranking does. Add a quick habit of noting where new customers say they found you, and make sure your website form emails the lead straight to you so nothing slips through a cracked inbox. That's a tracking system, and it fits on a sticky note.

When you want the fuller picture, that's what we pull together in your Client Center: calls, forms, and trends in one place, so you're looking at customers instead of rankings. 

What Epic's doing for you this week

This week the team is going profile by profile and site by site to make sure every client is actually capturing the calls and leads they earn: phone numbers that ring the right line, forms that truly deliver, and Business Profiles showing current hours and links. And we're keeping an eye on dashboards through this week's unconfirmed search movement without overreacting. Anything that needs your eyes, you'll hear from us directly. Otherwise, your latest reports and any messages from the team are waiting in your Client Center.

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