Dozens of pages search was told to ignore. 280% more Copilot citations a month later.
I ran the SEO for a US translation, interpreting and localisation company that works in hundreds of languages. The plan was a page for every language and service pairing that mattered, but in July 2026 I discovered that a batch of fresh pages carried an instruction telling search engines to stay away. After that was corrected, Bing's Copilot cited the site 280% more often in July than in June, and weekly citations stayed far higher through August.
Results
Bing Copilot citations
Google impressions
A huge catalogue, a thin website
The company covers hundreds of languages, and the keyword plan paired each important language with each service, Spanish interpreting being a typical example. That meant a dedicated page per pairing. In June 2026 Google sent about 180 clicks from roughly 9,400 impressions.
Three problems sat underneath. Around five dozen new language and service pages had been published carrying a noindex tag, which also kept them out of the sitemap. Those pages reused the same images and most of the same wording, a pattern that invites Google to crawl a URL and then decline to index it. And the brief targeted the middle and bottom of the funnel: buyers weighing price, credentials and how to hire, with healthcare excluded at the client's request.
Building the matrix and clearing the path
The work split three ways: making the pages exist, making them findable and joining them up. Everything below was in place by mid-August 2026.
- 01
One keyword, one page
I laid out a grid of services against languages with a single target keyword per URL, spanning interpreting, translation, localisation and notarisation. By mid-August the page sitemap held roughly ninety URLs across those services, each built for one specific pairing rather than a catch-all language page.
- 02
Fix the indexing switch
In July I spotted the batch of new pages carrying noindex. They were switched over so search engines could index them, I confirmed they now appeared in the live sitemap, and that sitemap went back to Google. That step changed which pages crawlers were permitted to index.
- 03
Link languages to services
Every language page gained a block pointing to its sibling services, so someone reading about translation in one language could reach interpreting in that same language. On the three main service hubs I added a language directory: twenty crawlable links up front, with the rest tucked into an expandable list built in CSS alone.
- 04
Aim the content at buyers
Alongside the structure, I sorted 45 commercial-intent keywords into six clusters, running from cost and pricing through certifications to choosing a provider. That kept new copy pointed at people ready to commission work rather than at general research.
Seen more often, across more pages
Over the closing four weeks, Copilot cited the site about 620% more often than in the opening four weeks of June. On its busiest day it drew on 18 separate pages, against 6 at the start, so answers were pulling from much more of the site than one popular URL.
Ordinary search moved as well. Google impressions in August were about 80% above June's, and clicks crept up every month. In Bing's regular results, four-week clicks went from 12 to just over a hundred. A far larger build of language pages launched in October 2026, outside this window, so none of these figures include it.
Other case studies
Want a result like this for your site?
A 30-minute call, no pitch deck. Tell me where you are stuck and I will tell you honestly whether I can help - and if I cannot, who can.