I built a hardware reference site that AI search cited 454,000 times.
SystemRequirements.net — 91 free browser tools and 2,397 game pages. In eight months it went from zero to 1.1 million Bing impressions, with 13 backlinks in total. This is how it went, with the data.
What I built
A reference database for PC hardware, with tools on top.
I wanted one place where a gamer could answer “will this run?” and “is my hardware okay?” without signing up for anything. So I built a database of 2,397 games with minimum and recommended specs, and 91 tools that run in the browser: stress tests, CPU and GPU comparisons, calculators for FPS, PSU wattage, bottlenecks and storage.
Around every tool I added a family of guides: a beginner’s guide, troubleshooting, optimisation and common mistakes. Tools are what people use, guides give search engines and AI answers something to quote, and the game pages catch the long tail.
Home. “The reference database for hardware.” Essential tools up front, live CPU rankings below.
A tool page. The CPU stress test: runs in the browser, with a long guide below it.
A game page. Min and recommended specs, a “Can I run it?” checker and similar games.
Scroll inside each frame to see the full page. Click an image to open it full size.
The journey
No viral moment. Steady compounding, plus a couple of structural moves that clearly paid off.
Bing search, per day
Clicks and impressions, 22 Feb – 28 Oct 2026. Hover for values.
Launch
I submitted the sitemap to Bing. A week later the first 8 impressions appeared, then 280 the next day.
The slow climb
Clicks went from 183 in March to 846 in April and 1,552 in May. Nothing clever, just compounding.
Structure
I split the sitemap into games and tools. The week I submitted the tools sitemap, daily impressions went from 3.2K on 4 Jul to 6.2K on 7 Jul.
Peak
Search peaked at 11.4K impressions a day. AI citations roughly doubled from August to September.
Steady state
About 100 clicks and 6–7K impressions a day, and around 4K AI citations a day, with no new work.
Results
Eight months of Bing data, exported on 31 October 2026.
AI citations per day
Microsoft Copilot and partners, 30 Apr – 28 Oct 2026. Values above 1K are rounded by Bing.
Where it came from
Search impressions by country
My top tools: AI vs search
AI citations (6 months) next to search performance (all time).
Which content did the work
Share of search clicks by page type
Who was searching
Search impressions by device
How to read these numbers: AI citations are not visits. They count how often an AI answer linked to my pages. Actual traffic was about 300–400 visits a day. Bing’s data is a sample and only covers the periods shown. Raw exports are in /data.
What I learned
Tools beat articles
72 tool pages produced 93% of all my search clicks. Guides added reach around them, but people came for something they could use, not something to read.
13,458 of 14,432 page clicksAI and search pick different winners
My most-cited page by far was the mouse speed test: 114K AI citations. In regular search it had 12K impressions and 59 clicks. I started tracking both separately.
114K citations vs 59 clicksImpressions are not clicks
“What is ram speed” got 170K impressions at position 7 and just 2 clicks, most likely because the answer was shown in the result itself. Meanwhile “ram speed test” at position 1.5 got a 47% CTR.
170K impressions → 2 clicksStructure compounds
I got here with 13 backlinks. What I did control was crawlability: clean sitemaps split by section, consistent URL patterns, and a guide family around every tool. 2.7K URLs indexed, zero errors.
13 backlinks · 0 errorsWhy I’m closing it
It reached about 300–400 visits a day but never earned anything, because I never set up ads, and hosting costs money every month. I don’t want to keep maintaining a site that costs more than it returns, so I’m shutting it down.
Before I do, I’m keeping this: the screenshots, the exports and the numbers, so the work stays verifiable.
What it proves
I can take a site from nothing to meaningful search and AI visibility on my own, find out what is working from the data, and change course when it isn’t paying for itself.
Proof
Screens straight from Bing Webmaster Tools. Click any to enlarge.
