Compared with Jul 11 – Aug 9, 2026
Confidential — only share this report with trusted people inside the Annuity Straight Talk team.Organic clicks grew 44.3% (641 → 925), average position improved from 15.7 to 13.8, and organic lead actions rose from 39 to 51. Last month's five articles (four new, one rewrite) did much of the lifting: together they went from 45 to 142 clicks, and the Canvas review alone brought in 56. The concern is /fia-rates/, which halved (24 → 12 clicks) as it slid from position 15.6 to 19.9. The opportunity is /myga-rates/: its impressions jumped from 601 to 5,058, but at position 17.3 only 13 of those searches clicked through.
/annuity-companies-to-avoid-in-2025/ is the top page at 66 clicks, and three of last month's new articles now sit in the top ten: the Canvas review (56), /reasons-to-avoid-annuities/ (34) and the Midland National review (33). The Allianz 222 review at /hidden-fees-in-the-allianz-222/ climbed from position 34.5 to 7.8 and took 36 clicks from zero. Two of the three declines below are pages that now redirect into a stronger sibling, so most of their clicks moved with them.
| Page | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /annuity-companies-to-avoid-in-2025/ Optimized | 66 | 5,215 | 1.27% | 12.4 |
| /fixed-indexed-annuity-calculator/ | 60 | 2,722 | 2.20% | 11.2 |
| /canvas-annuity-review-the-honest-read-on-a-b-myga/ New | 56 | 5,714 | 0.98% | 7.7 |
| /indexed-annuity-calculator/ | 50 | 2,775 | 1.80% | 21.6 |
| /fidelity-annuity-recommendation/ Optimized | 43 | 5,703 | 0.75% | 7.9 |
| /hidden-fees-in-the-allianz-222/ | 36 | 3,362 | 1.07% | 7.8 |
| /allianz-annuity-exodus/ Optimized | 35 | 5,774 | 0.61% | 8.3 |
| /reasons-to-avoid-annuities/ New | 34 | 1,144 | 2.97% | 8.0 |
| /midland-national-annuity-review/ New | 33 | 4,228 | 0.78% | 7.3 |
| /taking-down-the-allianz-benefit-control/ Optimized | 25 | 2,602 | 0.96% | 8.1 |
Labels mark pages we published or optimized during this or the previous reporting period.
| Page | Prev | Current | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| /canvas-annuity-review-the-honest-read-on-a-b-myga/ New | 0 | 56 | +56 |
| /hidden-fees-in-the-allianz-222/ | 0 | 36 | +36 |
| /allianz-annuity-exodus/ Optimized | 11 | 35 | +24 |
| /annuity-companies-to-avoid-in-2025/ Optimized | 43 | 66 | +23 |
| /reasons-to-avoid-annuities/ New | 16 | 34 | +18 |
| /fidelity-annuity-recommendation/ Optimized | 29 | 43 | +14 |
| /midland-national-annuity-review/ New | 19 | 33 | +14 |
| /allianz-annuities-overrated-performance/ Optimized | 34 | 7 | -27 |
| /indexed-annuity-calculator/ | 67 | 50 | -17 |
| /fia-rates/ | 24 | 12 | -12 |
/allianz-annuities-overrated-performance/ now redirects to /allianz-annuity-exodus/, and /indexed-annuity-calculator/ to /fixed-indexed-annuity-calculator/. Each pair lost little combined (45 → 42 and 117 → 110 clicks). /fia-rates/ is the one real decline: position 15.6 → 19.9.
"Fixed index annuity calculator" is still the biggest single query at 47 clicks (50 last period), holding position 11.1. Two "avoid" queries climbed: "9 reasons to avoid annuities" moved from position 5.4 to 3.6, and "top 10 annuity companies in trouble" from 5.3 to 2.8. Branded searches for "annuity straight talk" nearly doubled, from 5 to 9 clicks on 41 → 92 impressions.
| Query | Clicks | Δ vs prev | Impressions | CTR | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| fixed index annuity calculator | 47 | -3 | 1,043 | 4.51% | 11.1 |
| 9 reasons to avoid annuities | 11 | +1 | 219 | 5.02% | 3.6 |
| annuity companies to avoid | 11 | -1 | 880 | 1.25% | 6.4 |
| top 10 annuity companies in trouble | 10 | +3 | 265 | 3.77% | 2.8 |
| annuity straight talk Branded | 9 | +4 | 92 | 9.78% | 1.5 |
| allianz annuity reviews | 8 | +7 | 660 | 1.21% | 11.7 |
| fixed index annuity payout calculator | 8 | +7 | 40 | 20.00% | 1.4 |
| spia calculator | 7 | -4 | 327 | 2.14% | 9.0 |
| fia account calculator | 5 | +3 | 56 | 8.93% | 1.9 |
| spia annuity calculator | 5 | +1 | 245 | 2.04% | 10.3 |
| fixed indexed annuity calculator | 4 | -3 | 140 | 2.86% | 9.7 |
| 9 reasons to avoid annuities in retirement | 3 | +2 | 76 | 3.95% | 3.1 |
| allianz 222 annuity | 3 | +2 | 190 | 1.58% | 11.2 |
| allianz 222 fixed index annuity | 3 | +3 | 61 | 4.92% | 12.3 |
| canvas annuity reviews | 3 | +3 | 256 | 1.17% | 6.5 |
96% of clicks come from the United States (888 of 925), the audience a US annuity practice needs. US clicks grew 43.0% (621 → 888), and US average position improved from 15.3 to 13.1. Every other country is in single digits.
| Country | Clicks | Prev | Impressions | CTR | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 United States | 888 | 621 | 117,642 | 0.75% | 13.1 |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | 6 | 1 | 534 | 1.12% | 9.8 |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 6 | 2 | 1,593 | 0.38% | 21.5 |
| 🇵🇷 Puerto Rico | 3 | 5 | 113 | 2.65% | 7.1 |
| 🇮🇳 India | 2 | 1 | 714 | 0.28% | 36.8 |
| 🇵🇭 Philippines | 2 | 0 | 450 | 0.44% | 48.8 |
| 🇸🇬 Singapore | 2 | 0 | 138 | 1.45% | 19.0 |
| 🇿🇦 South Africa | 2 | 0 | 103 | 1.94% | 11.1 |
| 🇦🇺 Australia | 1 | 1 | 197 | 0.51% | 9.8 |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 1 | 2 | 155 | 0.65% | 10.2 |
Organic search brought 1,446 sessions, up 37.3% from 1,053. Google-organic visitors stayed longer than paid (54s) or direct (36s) visitors: 2m 13s of engagement per session, up from 1m 50s and about 2.5× paid search. The review pages hold readers best: Google-organic visitors spent 4m 42s on the Canvas review and 5m 11s on the MassMutual American Legend 7 review. AI assistants sent 15 sessions, up from 9, mostly from ChatGPT.
| Source / medium | Sessions | Prev | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| google / cpc Paid — context | 5,975 | 6,068 | -93 |
| google / organic | 1,313 | 948 | +365 |
| (direct) / (none) | 1,136 | 2,740 | -1,604 |
| email-broadcast / email | 1,095 | 502 | +593 |
| email-automated / email | 130 | 139 | -9 |
| bing / organic | 72 | 65 | +7 |
| yahoo / organic | 38 | 15 | +23 |
| app.ontraport.com / referral | 22 | 20 | +2 |
| duckduckgo / organic | 20 | 22 | -2 |
| youtube.com / referral | 18 | 14 | +4 |
| AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) | 15 | 9 | +6 |
| linkedin.com / referral | 10 | 9 | +1 |
One page, /index-annuities-2/, shows 291 Google-organic views (103 visitors) in GA4 but no impressions in Search Console for the same window. We're checking how those visits are tagged, so read about 100 of the organic visitors with caution. Last period's direct traffic was inflated by automated visits (15s average engagement), so its drop isn't lost readers. Paid search is shown for context only; this report covers organic.
Organic search produced 51 lead actions: 29 clicks on the calendar booking link and 22 thank-you page landings, up from 39 (23 and 16). That's one lead action for every 28 organic sessions, about the same as last period's one per 27, so the extra organic traffic is converting at the same pace rather than diluting. Email thank-you landings rose from 36 to 56. Display and paid search carry the ad funnel's volume and are shown for context only.
| Channel | Sessions | Calendar clicks | Prev | Thank-you landings | Prev |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic search | 1,449 | 29 | 23 | 22 | 16 |
| 1,226 | 12 | 6 | 56 | 36 | |
| Direct | 1,136 | 38 | 5 | 54 | 109 |
| Referral | 306 | 19 | 22 | 2 | 0 |
| Paid search Context | 2,944 | 67 | 10 | 238 | 294 |
| Display Context | 3,034 | 570 | 820 | 236 | 208 |
Counts are raw GA4 events (calendar-link clicks and thank-you page landings), not unique people. Windows match the traffic table above (Aug 10 – Sep 8 vs Jul 13 – Aug 11). Sessions here come from GA4's channel-group export (1,449 organic), which groups a few sources differently from the source/medium table above (1,446). GA4's channel groups also split google / cpc between Paid search and Display. Minor channels are in the data file.
Organic visitors spent an average of 3m 03s actively on the site, and only 3 rage clicks were recorded all month, so nothing looks visibly broken. Dead clicks cluster on the review pages: the Canvas review (54), MassMutual American Legend 7 (34) and the Allianz Benefit Control review (33). In 9 sampled sessions, those dead clicks land on headings and summary text: reading behavior rather than anything broken. Mobile readers get less far down a page than desktop readers (39% vs 51% average scroll depth).
What these terms mean
| Page | Sessions | Dead clicks | Quickbacks |
|---|---|---|---|
| /canvas-annuity-review-the-honest-read-on-a-b-myga/ | 51 | 54 | 2 |
| /massmutual-american-legend-7-review-the-good-the-catch-and-who-it-fits/ | 19 | 34 | — |
| /taking-down-the-allianz-benefit-control/ | 34 | 33 | — |
| /annuity-companies-to-avoid-in-2025/ | 63 | 29 | 4 |
| /hidden-fees-in-the-allianz-222/ | 42 | 19 | 2 |
| /annuity-death-benefits/ | — | 19 | — |
| /misinformation-on-annuity-org/ | — | 15 | — |
| /what-would-you-do-with-an-old-variable-annuity/ | — | 13 | — |
Clarity counts non-bot visits only and is filtered to organic search traffic, Aug 13 – Sep 8 (it began collecting on Aug 13, so Aug 10–12 are not covered). This is the first month of Clarity data, so month-over-month comparisons start next report. Its session counts are measured differently from GA4's and are not directly comparable. "—" means the page was outside Clarity's top-30 by sessions or top-10 by quickbacks. The session total includes about 120 visits to /index-annuities-2/ that Search Console shows no search impressions for; we're checking how they're tagged, and they're left out of the table above.
The backlink numbers below are the Aug 10 snapshot, carried forward this month. It showed domain rating 17, 689 referring domains and 1,360 live backlinks. Most of the newest referring domains are spam and link-farm sites, which Google generally ignores rather than counts against a site, so we monitor them rather than act on them. The links that matter are the genuine ones: youtube.com (DR 99), azbigmedia.com (DR 78) and dexknows.com (DR 78).
| Domain | DR | Links | First seen | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| youtube.com | 99 | 1 | Jul 21 | Legitimate |
| dexknows.com | 78 | 1 | Aug 9 | Legitimate |
| azbigmedia.com | 78 | 1 | Jul 24 | Legitimate |
| rankboostly.shop | 54 | 1 | Jul 24 | Spam suspect |
| backlinkshop.site | 48 | 1 | Jul 28 | Spam suspect |
| byteshort.xyz | 41 | 1 | Aug 2 | Spam suspect |
| dailymusings.top | 37 | 1 | Aug 5 | Spam suspect |
| outrank-hq-ultimate-ranking.store | 32 | 1 | Aug 2 | Spam suspect |
| link-baron-optimal-organic-collective.store | 32 | 1 | Aug 4 | Spam suspect |
| paramount-collective-outrank-hq-dr-90.store | 32 | 1 | Jul 15 | Spam suspect |
Reach grew 162.1%: LinkedIn impressions reached 8,867 (3,383 last period) and reactions rose to 16. The extra reach isn't turning into visits yet. Page views fell from 14 to 9, and only 1 new follower arrived against 18 last period, holding the base at 65. GA4 shows the same flat picture, with 10 sessions from LinkedIn against 9.
Comparisons are LinkedIn's own prior-30-day figures. The page appeared in 16 LinkedIn searches in the last 7 days (Sep 4–10), up 23.1% on the week before.
8 pages shipped this period, all logged in the Airtable content system: 4 new articles and 4 optimized pages. Last month's work kept compounding. The five articles published Jul 16 – Aug 8 (four new, one rewrite) went from 45 to 142 clicks, and every one now ranks between positions 6.5 and 8.8. Last month's six optimized pages grew 30% against the site's 44%. The gap is /allianz-annuities-overrated-performance/, which now redirects into /allianz-annuity-exodus/; the other four pages grew 50% (84 → 126 clicks).
| Article | Published | Clicks | Impressions | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corebridge vs Allianz vs Athene: Which Income Rider Actually Pays You More? | Aug 17 | 2 | 1,030 | 7.5 |
| Allianz Life vs Athene: A Straight Read on Two Bonus Annuities | Aug 22 | 6 | 1,092 | 7.5 |
| How to Get a Second Opinion on an Annuity You've Been Pitched | Aug 28 | 1 | 85 | 10.8 |
| How to Get Out of an Annuity: 7 Exit Routes and When to Use Each | Sep 7 | 1 | 67 | 12.3 |
| Athene Annuity Reviews: A Straight Read From Someone Who Places Them | Sep 11 After window | — | — | — |
Both August comparison articles already sit at position 7.5, with about 1,000 impressions each, less than a month after publishing. The Athene review went live on Sep 11, after this window closed; its numbers start next report.
| Page | Optimized | Why it was flagged | Clicks prev → now | Position prev → now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /taking-down-the-allianz-benefit-control/ | Aug 22 | High impressions, low CTR · competing pages | 14 → 25 | 8.5 → 8.1 |
| /pros-and-cons-of-indexed-annuities/ | Aug 28 | Near page one | 3 → 11 | 15.5 → 16.6 |
| /the-cons-of-variable-annuities/ | Aug 28 | Traffic decline · near page one | 2 → 1 | 18.1 → 19.4 |
| /athene-performance-elite-10-plus/ | Sep 5 | High impressions, low CTR · near page one | 2 → 4 | 12.1 → 8.9 |
| /fixed-indexed-annuity-calculator/ | Sep 11 After window | Traffic decline · competing pages · near page one | — | — |
Three of the four refreshes landed in the last 12 days of the window, so their full effect shows next month. /pros-and-cons-of-indexed-annuities/ already grew impressions from 3,219 to 4,856.
| Page | Type | Clicks prev → now | Δ | Position prev → now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /canvas-annuity-review-the-honest-read-on-a-b-myga/ | New | 0 → 56 | +56 | 7.2 → 7.7 |
| /reasons-to-avoid-annuities/ | New | 16 → 34 | +18 | 9.7 → 8.0 |
| /midland-national-annuity-review/ | New | 19 → 33 | +14 | 7.5 → 7.3 |
| /massmutual-american-legend-7-review-the-good-the-catch-and-who-it-fits/ | New | 5 → 16 | +11 | 8.4 → 6.5 |
| /what-financial-metrics-to-review-when-evaluating-annuity-carriers/ | New | 5 → 3 | -2 | 8.4 → 8.8 |
| /allianz-annuity-exodus/ | Optimized | 11 → 35 | +24 | 11.4 → 8.3 |
| /annuity-companies-to-avoid-in-2025/ | Optimized | 43 → 66 | +23 | 11.7 → 12.4 |
| /fidelity-annuity-recommendation/ | Optimized | 29 → 43 | +14 | 8.6 → 7.9 |
| /misinformation-on-annuity-org/ | Optimized | 2 → 7 | +5 | 10.0 → 8.3 |
| /the-pros-of-fidelity-annuities/ | Optimized | 10 → 10 | 0 | 14.2 → 15.4 |
| /allianz-annuities-overrated-performance/ | Optimized | 34 → 7 | -27 | 9.1 → 8.8 |
Compares this window (Aug 10 – Sep 8) with the previous one (Jul 11 – Aug 9). /allianz-annuities-overrated-performance/ now redirects to /allianz-annuity-exodus/, so their clicks are best read together: 45 → 42.
You're on the SEO Engine's Omnipresence plan. Last month's articles tripled their clicks (45 → 142). Doubling our publishing and optimization pace doubles down on what works, for better results, faster. Here's what each next plan adds.
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