Build-in-Public Day 15: GSC clicks 7.4x, impressions 9.6x in 15 days — full data disclosure

I just hit Day 15 of an AI-driven Build-in-Public push for Tasteck, a vertical SaaS I run. Sharing the actual numbers because most "Build-in-Public works for SEO" claims you see online lack data.

TL;DR — 15 days, 4/24 → 5/8

7.4x clicks / 9.6x impressions in 15 days.

What I shipped

Volume layer (4/24-4/27)

• 12 niche-industry guide blog posts in 4 days (one per vertical use case)
• 5 long-form Note articles (Japanese platform similar to Medium)
• Daily GSC URL inspection requests (12/day quota)

Trust layer (4/28-5/4)

• Daily Build-in-Public log posts
• Industry KPI benchmark report Q1 edition
• Zenn (Japanese dev community) + dev.to cross-posts in English
• X / Note / dev.to community engagement

Incident layer (5/5-5/8)

• Volume 6: Stripe webhook silent failure for 5 days — 4xx retry trap incident report (5/5)
• Volume 7: PR-only → PR + monetize pivot, /work consulting page launch (5/7)
• Volume 8: 4-year-old auth-bypass vulnerability hot fix in our password-reset API (5/8)
• Industry KPI benchmark report Q2 edition (5/8)

Daily clicks growth

4/14: 1   4/24: 3
4/15: 2   4/25: 3
4/16: 0   4/26: 0
4/17: 3   4/27: 10  ← Volume blogs starting to be picked up
4/18: 5   4/28: 3
4/19: 1   4/29: 6
4/20: 4   4/30: 5
4/21: 2   5/1:  9
4/22: 4   5/2:  6
4/23: 6   5/3:  8
          5/4:  9
          5/5:  9
          5/6: 15   ← Volume 6 Stripe webhook incident publish day
          5/7: 16   ← Volume 7 /work launch + Volume 8 prep
          5/8: 11

The two peak days (5/6 = 15, 5/7 = 16) align exactly with the publish dates of incident-report blogs. That's not a coincidence.

Top 5 pages by clicks (last 7 days, 5/2-5/8)

1. Industry-specific repeat-customer rate guide (published 4/27): 16 clicks / 341 impressions / position 5.1
2. Homepage: 12 clicks
3. Industry confirmation tax guide: 6 clicks
4. Industry NG-customer detection guide: 6 clicks
5. Industry LINE bulk-messaging guide: 5 clicks

Notice: the #1 page was published 4/27 and only started getting real traffic from 5/2 — 5 days from publish to SEO traction, consistently across volume blogs.

Position 1-2 queries (niche industry terms)

"Industry designation type A vs B" at position 1.4 is small but huge — Google has effectively designated my page as the canonical definition for this niche industry term. Once that happens, position 1-2 becomes stable because there's almost no competition for these vertical terms.

Lesson 1: 3-layer model (volume × trust × incident)

The 15-day data exposed something I hadn't fully expected — different action types pay off on different timelines.

Crucially, these three layers must be combined intentionally. Volume alone has no hook. Trust alone has no traffic. Incident alone has no continuity.

Lesson 2: incident-report blogs have burst reach

The two peak days (5/6 + 5/7) were both incident-report blog publish days. The pattern:

• Publish day: tech-dev community shares immediately on X / dev.to / Zenn → direct click traffic
• Reader profile: not industry operators but engineers, so CTR is higher (5.78% on 5/7)
• Side effect: brand-name (e.g., "Tasteck") query impressions get a boost in the following week

You can't ship incidents on demand, so the realistic strategy is "earn with volume daily, burst with incidents when they happen."

Lesson 3: Build-in-Public logs have a hidden role

The conventional wisdom "Build-in-Public is good for SEO" turned out to be half right.

• Logs alone: minimal direct search traffic (no keyword targeting, by design)
• BUT — the accumulated log stream is what makes incident-report blogs credible when they hit
• Without the log layer, incident posts feel disconnected; readers can't see the context behind why this particular issue arose now

So Build-in-Public logs work as "prerequisites" for incident posts, not as a direct SEO play.

Next 15 days (Day 16-30)

• Q3 industry KPI benchmark blog (by Day 30)
• post-incident structural-fix retrospective (UNIQUE INDEX + credential-id contract migration after the passwordReset case)
• Continue dev.to cross-posting for international reach
• Switch to 2x daily activity rhythm (11:30 + 20:00) instead of one large evening burst — to test if continuity scales the curve

I'm running Tasteck as a vertical SaaS in production for 8+ years (NestJS + TypeORM + Next.js + Stripe + AWS) and currently take freelance work in Stripe / NestJS / Next.js spot development and AI consulting. The corp HP for the operating company (EST FORT Inc.) is at est-fort-site.vercel.app.

If you're running a similar Build-in-Public push and want to compare data, drop a comment — I publish the raw GSC numbers because the field is still light on real datasets.