Live experiments
The lab.
I test SEO on my own sites before I test it on yours. Real domains, real data, and the results published whether they worked or not.
The lab is for the experiments. For what is actually changing in search week to week, that is the blog.
By James BurfieldSEO consultant · figures recorded 24 August 2026Motocross Mecca
Running
The question: how far can a brand new site get on content structure alone, with no links and no authority behind it?
Five months from a standing start. The site ranks bikes and riders through an ELO rating system, which generates comparison pages that answer a real question rather than repeating a spec sheet. It has earned almost no links. At Domain Rating 5 it is now doing 34,000 impressions a month, which says the ceiling on a new site is lower than most people assume when the content is structured properly. Figures are Search Console, April to 23 August 2026.
Population Statistics
Built, measuring
The question: what happens when you rebuild a dead domain that the rest of the web still cites?
The domain is 25 years old and was a well known population data source before it went dark. Wikipedia still points at it 8,816 times, alongside Wikiwand, Le Parisien, the Internet Archive, Wikidata and a handful of universities. It has been rebuilt to 24,162 pages covering 246 countries, with a restored 2005 archive for the 20 year view. No performance results yet. The baseline is recorded and the interesting part is whether legacy citations still count for anything once a domain comes back.
Toolbay
Early
The question: does an aged domain’s authority carry over when the topic changes completely?
Bought aged. It used to be an automotive tools business, and it still holds links from 15 motoring forums including PistonHeads, FerrariChat, BenzWorld and TDIClub, plus trade directories like Kompass and Curlie. Of the 40 strongest by traffic, nearly all were first seen before 2021. The rebuild is 154 pages of UK calculators: VAT, maternity and sick pay, fuel costs, date maths. None of it has anything to do with car tools, which is the point. Population Statistics tests the same idea with the topic intact. This one tests it with the topic thrown away.
A warning about the public numbers. Ahrefs reports 364 referring domains. Ignore it. In April 2026 the site sat at 54. Then a link farm started pointing throwaway .shop and .store domains at it, names like backlinkmasters.shop and high-da-do-follow-and-niche-edit-syndicate.store, and the count ran to 397 by July. Every one I sampled has zero traffic. New ones are still arriving daily. The baseline that counts is the 54, and anyone measuring this site from the raw total will read it wrong. No performance results yet: 0 organic keywords as of 6 September 2026.
WagePage
Early
The question: can a very small site compete in a money topic where Google applies its strictest scrutiny?
13 pages of UK take home pay, company car tax and maternity pay calculators on 2026/27 rates. Pay and tax is about as YMYL as it gets, so this one tests whether accuracy and clear sourcing can stand in for the size and brand that usually win those queries.
Baseline, recorded 6 September 2026. Fresh domain, no history to inherit: DR 0, and Ahrefs has only ever seen 6 referring domains, with all-time equal to live so nothing has been lost. All 6 are spam and every one has zero traffic. seogrow.shop and backlinksdrive.shop arrived first, on 25 July, and the most recent landed yesterday. Four of the six are dofollow. So the honest reading is that a new site with no promotion behind it got found by link farms before it got found by anybody real, and the genuine link count is still zero. 0 organic keywords, 0 traffic. That makes this the clean opposite of Toolbay, which came with 20 years of other people’s links attached.
Everything else I run
These are the other sites and tools I build and run myself. They're where I try ideas before they reach client work. The experiments above are the ones with results worth writing up so far.
SEO tools
- SEOGeoAuditA free audit of a business's local search and AI search visibility.
- CitationHQSubmits UK businesses to local directories and citations.
- WhereInAITracks whether ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI answers mention a brand.
- IndexedMeReads your own Google Search Console data and explains why pages aren't indexed.
- TownDirectoryA UK business directory that shows official ratings.
- Masters of SEOTracks Google updates and ranking systems, and who in SEO to trust.
UK data and reference sites
- UK Pay ScalesNHS bands, teacher, police and forces pay, and the minimum wage from published pay documents.
- Financial CalculatorUK mortgage, tax and savings sums on published government figures.
- My Fuel PricesLive petrol and diesel prices from the government's Fuel Finder data.
- My MOT CheckerMOT history by registration, and pass rates by make and model from DVSA data.
- Driving Test EarlierHow to find a driving test cancellation and get an earlier test.
- ContactNumbersOfficial phone numbers for UK government and public services, each checked against the official source.
- WhoCalledYou.ukUK area code and phone number lookup from Ofcom's numbering data.
- UK Term DatesSchool term dates taken from each UK council's published calendar.
- EPC Register CheckEPC ratings and energy data for England and Wales from official statistics.
Care
- BestHomeCarersCompares regulated home care in England and Scotland from the CQC and Care Inspectorate registers.
- CareJobs247Care jobs, with every employer matched to its regulator registration.
Motorsport and travel
- BSB MeccaBritish Superbike results and records since 1988. A sister database to Motocross Mecca.
- Motocross RumoursMotocross silly-season news, with each claim graded against what actually happens.
- Disney World Orlando FloridaA Disney World planning guide with live ride wait times.
Builders
- SoloShowProjects built by one person, re-checked weekly to see whether they're still running.