condoms.uk: turning a year-long decline into 17 million impressions and growing AI visibility

condoms.uk is a specialist UK online retailer of condoms, lubricants and sexual wellness products, competing in Google with pharmacy chains, the big brands and Amazon.

When I started on the site in February 2026, organic visibility had been falling for about a year. “Durex condoms”, one of its most valuable brand searches, had dropped out of the top 100, and a lot of the existing content was losing clicks. The first job was stopping that.

In the last 12 months the site has earned 17 million Google impressions and 204,121 clicks, with 388 search terms in the top three, 3,626 on page one and 1.2 million generative AI impressions. Google AI Overview citations have grown from 54 to 633.

At a glance

Search figures are from Google Search Console, 15 September 2025 to 14 September 2026. Top three means an average position of three or better with at least 100 impressions and at least one click. AI and authority figures are from Ahrefs and Search Console’s Generative AI report, 17 September 2026.

The starting point

Ahrefs showed organic traffic falling steadily from spring 2025, and by early 2026 “durex condoms” was outside the top 100 altogether.

The market doesn’t make things easy. For the single word “condoms”, the UK results are dominated by the NHS and sexual health services, the major brands, Amazon and the high street chains. A specialist retailer isn’t going to out-muscle those on the broadest terms, so I didn’t spend the effort there.

The opening was in the questions shoppers ask before they buy: which size, whether a brand is any good, whether lube goes off, what the difference is between Skyn and Durex. People search for things they’d never ask in a shop. Those searches sit right before a product decision, and they’re the questions AI Overviews now try to answer, so being the source those answers quote was part of the plan from the start.

What I changed

Protected the pages already losing ground. Search Console showed 29 blog posts losing clicks, from a mix of AI Overviews answering simple questions, out-of-date product information, thinner content than competitors and broken internal links. I built a refresh programme around them instead of leaving them to decline. Each refresh kept the best of the original and rewrote the rest, added a short answer near the top, fixed internal links and checked every product link was live before publishing.

Built new content around real customer questions. Articles answer what shoppers actually search, from “does lube expire” and “what size condoms should I buy” to “why are condoms called johnnies”, alongside reviews of brands such as EXS, Adore and Pasante and comparisons like Skyn vs Durex. Each one opens with a direct answer so readers and AI Overviews get the point straight away, and the medical information is sourced from the NHS, WHO and peer-reviewed research.

Consolidated competing pages. Where several posts competed for the same search, such as expired condoms, condom allergies and sizing, I merged them into one stronger page each and redirected the weaker versions. I did the same with overlapping collections, bringing large and XL, small, thin and lube onto one page each, so authority built on a single URL instead of being split.

Strengthened the commercial collections. The informational content needed to support the pages that sell. I added 121 internal links from across the blog into the main condoms collection and mapped another 105 into ten more collections. The client’s PR work was aimed at the same pages, so internal links and external authority reinforced each other.

Joined paid and organic data. I used Search Intelligence to combine a year of Google Ads search terms with Search Console: 92,000 queries across £72,000 of spend. It showed 13,385 searches the business was paying for with no organic presence at all, which gave me a better way to order the next pages than keyword volume alone.

Turning the decline around

Comparing the last six months with the six before, average position across the whole site improved from 9.8 to 8.7. The biggest gains came where the work was concentrated. The sizing guide, “what size condoms should I buy”, earned 68% more clicks and nearly three times the impressions, and “does lube expire” gained a third more clicks from a position it already held.

The sizing searches show the pattern most clearly. “condom sizes” climbed from an average position of 19.7 to 10.5, and its impressions rose from 7,949 to 30,564. “delay spray” moved from 23.7 to 10.7, and “skyn condoms” from 20.5 to 5.7.

Growing in AI search

AI visibility moved at the same time. Ahrefs counts 633 AI Overview answers citing the site, up from 54, and around 1,300 AI answers across Google, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. Search Console reports 1.2 million generative AI impressions since Google began publishing that data in May 2026.

That growth came from the same content strategy, not a separate “AI SEO” campaign. The pages answer the question clearly, use accurate information and give readers a natural next step into the shop, which makes them useful in ordinary search and easy for AI tools to quote.

Authority rose alongside it. Domain Rating went from 39 to 45, with 261 more referring domains, and for the first time page-level and domain-level authority were rising together. That usually means the links are landing on the right pages.

Where it ranks

Figures are for the last 12 months. One clear answer to “does lube expire” brought in more than 1,400 clicks from a top-three spot, and the reviews rank just as strongly because they give shoppers what they need to choose.

My contribution

I’ve led the SEO and content strategy for condoms.uk since February 2026. I picked up a site that had been losing visibility for a year and started by protecting what it had earned: I found the 29 declining posts and built the refresh programme around them.

From there I consolidated the competing articles and collections, mapped the internal linking into the commercial pages, and used paid and organic search data together to find where the business was paying for traffic it had no organic presence for. I built the content and AI search approach around the questions customers ask before buying.

The result is a site with average position up from 9.8 to 8.7, AI Overview citations up from 54 to 633 and Domain Rating up from 39 to 45, and searches such as “skyn condoms” now sitting at an average position of 5.7.

What this shows

The biggest opportunity for a specialist retailer isn’t always the broadest commercial keyword. condoms.uk competes against much larger brands, but it can win the questions those sites answer in a sentence or skip altogether.

That content does three jobs: it brings in research-stage search traffic, it gets cited in AI answers, and it moves authority and readers towards the collection pages that sell. The turnaround came from treating content, links, consolidation and AI visibility as one plan.

On a retailer with a changing range, content that names products needs a live check every time it’s touched, and that check was part of every refresh.

Services used

This project drew on content strategy, content refreshes, Search Intelligence reports and monthly reporting, with the analysis run through Search Intelligence. It sits in ecommerce and Shopify, and FalseEyelashes.co.uk is a close comparison: another specialist retailer winning search through useful content.

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