condoms.uk: 17 million impressions by answering the awkward questions

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 in early 2026 the site had been losing ground for about a year. In the last 12 months it has earned 17 million impressions and 204,121 clicks from Google, and 1.2 million generative AI impressions since Google began reporting them.

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 position

condoms.uk was in a long decline when I picked it up. Ahrefs showed organic traffic falling steadily from spring 2025, and “durex condoms”, one of the site’s most valuable brand searches, had dropped out of the top 100 altogether by early 2026. The first job was stopping that.

The market itself doesn’t make things easy. For the single word “condoms”, the UK results are dominated by 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 any time soon.

Where a specialist can win is in the questions. People search for things they’d never ask in a shop: which size to buy, whether a brand is any good, whether lube goes off. Those searches deserve honest, accurate answers, and they lead naturally to the right product. They’re also exactly the questions AI Overviews now try to answer, so being the source those answers quote became part of the plan from the start.

The SEO and AI search strategy

The work ran as one plan across six areas:

Refreshes came first because they protected what the site was already earning. New content and AI search work built on top, and internal linking moved the authority that content earned onto the pages that sell.

What was done

Question-led content. Articles answer the questions shoppers actually search, from “does lube expire” to “why are condoms called johnnies”, alongside reviews of brands such as EXS, Adore and Pasante and comparisons like Skyn vs Durex. Every article opens with a bold, direct answer so both readers and AI Overviews get the point straight away.

A refresh programme for declining posts. 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. Each refresh kept the best of the original, rewrote the rest, added a short answer passage near the top, fixed internal links and checked every product link was live before publishing.

Consolidating duplicate posts. Where several posts competed for the same search, such as expired condoms, condom allergies and sizing, they were merged into one stronger page each, with redirects. The same approach was applied to overlapping collection pages, bringing groups such as large and XL, small, thin and lube onto one stronger page each, so authority built on a single URL rather than being split.

Internal links and PR on the same targets. 121 links from across the blog now point into the main condoms collection, and the next 105 are mapped into ten more collections. The client’s PR work targets the same pages, so the links from both reinforce each other rather than spreading thin.

Joining paid and organic data. Search Intelligence joined a year of Google Ads search terms with Search Console, 92,000 queries across £72,000 of spend. It showed where paid was covering ground organic hadn’t reached yet, and 13,385 searches the site was paying for with no organic presence at all, which set the order for the next pages.

Turning the decline around

Comparing the last six months with the six before, condoms.uk’s 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 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

condoms.uk now appears in AI answers far more often than it did. Ahrefs counts 633 AI Overview answers citing the site, up from 54, and 1.3 thousand AI answers across Google, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. Google’s own Search Console reports 1.2 million generative AI impressions since it started publishing the data in May 2026.

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 honest 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.

The result

In the last 12 months condoms.uk earned 17 million impressions and 204,121 clicks from Google, with 388 search terms in the top three and 3,626 on page one. After a year of decline, positions are rising on the pages that matter, and AI Overview citations are up almost twelvefold.

What I learned

On a retailer with a changing range, content that names products needs a live check every time it’s touched. Refreshing a post that recommends discontinued products does more harm than leaving it alone, so the stock check is part of the process.

AI Overviews changed what informational content is for. A question like “does lube expire” is now often answered on the results page, so the click that used to follow is less certain. The people asking those questions still go on to buy, though, and being the source the AI Overview cites keeps the brand in front of them at exactly that point. The informational pages that paid off were the ones that answered clearly enough to be quoted, then gave a natural route from the answer to the right product. That’s what turns research-stage visibility into sales.

Limitations

The 12-month totals cover the whole site, not only the pages I worked on, and condoms.uk had search visibility before this work began. Across the whole site, clicks held broadly level between the two six-month periods, so the growth is concentrated in the areas the work focused on rather than spread across every page. The broadest head terms remain dominated by health services and national brands.

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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