BellyUp! Discoverability Case Study

Digital Karma at BellyUp!: Discovery Is Growing

BellyUp! connects city guides and topic websites for places to eat and things to do. Follow its older sites to see how the network is earning more Google exposure.

Krisada Eaton 27 views
Proof Point

Google clicks rose 66% in the older group.

Case Receipt

BellyUp! Discoverability: results, limits and next checks

Ongoing ... November 6, 2026 checkpoint
Result

What the BellyUp! Discoverability results show

The older BellyUp! group gained Google exposure while the complete current family passed v8.2 checks.

Limits

What the BellyUp! Discoverability results do not prove

The comparison cannot separate the protocol from content work, site age or other changes. The checks prove implementation; request logs show crawler activity.

Next Checkpoint

What we will measure next for BellyUp! Discoverability

November 20 is the next planned read, using the same older group and the latest complete source dates.

Measurement Frame

What we measured for BellyUp! Discoverability

The November 6 implementation check covers the complete registered BellyUp! family. These figures describe coverage, not audience size.

138
17 cities, topic sites and the national site

Every registered property passed inventory and conformance.

5,530
zero failures in the current crawl receipts

The full-family total comes from same-day receipts, not a homepage sample.

420
reusable content collections across the family

The Dataset layer is present in the checked HTML pages.

The Jax receipt and catalog are inspectable examples. The totals combine all 138 properties.

Summary

BellyUp! Discoverability: the short version

BellyUp! is a local discovery network that helps people choose places to eat and things to do. BellyUp! America connects its city guides and topic websites.

Digital Karma is giving our portfolio a consistent way to explain its content to AI and search crawlers. BellyUp! now gives us a measured view of that work in a live local-discovery network.

The older BellyUp! group is earning more Google impressions and clicks. Named crawlers are also requesting the protocol files.

That is progress worth publishing. The next job is to follow it long enough to see which parts turn into readers and actions.

Plain English

BellyUp! Discoverability in plain English

Think of BellyUp! as a growing collection of local guides. Digital Karma gives those guides clear labels and a directory a crawler can read, then checks that the labels are actually present on the pages.

A directory makes the collection easier to explore. It does not choose which book someone will recommend.

This is the first BellyUp! checkpoint in our Digital Karma Progress Reports. The separate Buy It Here launch baseline starts the same watch on a new retail network.

Google impressions grew in the older BellyUp! group

The same 57 hosts, selected before the comparison began. An impression means a page appeared in Google results.

+1,586 impressions ... +14%

Earlier 14-day period
Later 14-day period ... +14%

Observed page-level Google Search Console impressions. Missing site-day records are not filled with zeros.

Google clicks grew in the same BellyUp! group

Clicks are visits from Google results. They are measured separately from crawler requests.

+40 clicks ... +66%

Earlier 14-day period
Later 14-day period ... +66%

Observed page-level Google Search Console clicks. Rounded percentage change.

Which crawlers requested BellyUp! AI endpoints?

Recorded requests to /ai/ resources, October 23 to November 5. Each label links to the publisher's crawler explanation.

145 requests across 89 properties

GPTBot 75
Warehouse group: training
General Google crawler; kept distinct from Googlebot
Warehouse group: search
Bingbot 14
Warehouse group: search
Warehouse group: AI search

Requests are not citations, rankings or confirmed successful responses. A publisher's crawler purpose can be broader than our reporting group.

Context

BellyUp! Discoverability: the starting conditions

The question was straightforward: with so many properties now using Digital Karma, is anything happening beyond the installation?

BellyUp! is a strong place to look. It combines city guides with topic sites for different kinds of outings, connected through the national BellyUp! directory.

The broader v8.2 rollout began in September. More cities arrived afterward, alongside new guides and venue profiles.

A larger network can produce a larger total even when none of its older sites improves. We wanted a comparison that kept those new arrivals from swallowing the story.

Methodology

What changed in BellyUp! Discoverability

Comparing the same older BellyUp! group

We selected the current active BellyUp! hosts registered in the warehouse before October 7. That fixes the group at 57 hosts for both periods.

The first period is October 7 through October 20. The second is October 21 through November 3, the latest imported Google Search Console date when this report was checked.

We counted page-level Search Console results only when the page hostname matched its own property. That prevents a parent property and a separately imported topic site from counting the same page twice.

These are observed totals. A missing property-day record stays unknown; it does not become a made-up zero.

Registration time is our repeatable selection rule. It is not a claim about the original launch date.

Checking the protocol separately

The active host list reconciles with the protocol registry. Inventory and conformance checks passed, and all existing full-sitemap crawl receipts were dated November 6.

Those receipts check the HTML pages as well as the catalogs. A file sitting in an AI folder would not pass this test by itself.

Counting requests without turning them into claims

The endpoint count covers October 23 through November 5. It comes from requests classified as crawlers in the live warehouse.

That summary does not retain the response status for each endpoint request. It tells us what was requested, not whether every response succeeded or what happened to the returned information.

The public case-study data preserves the fixed host list and observed per-host totals for the next comparison.

Findings

What the BellyUp! Discoverability results show

Google clicks rose 66% in the older group.

Its Google impressions grew too. The comparison charts show both changes against the same earlier group rather than the full expanding network.

Crawlers are asking for Digital Karma files

The recorded endpoint requests include GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot. GoogleOther, Googlebot and Bingbot appear too.

We keep their purposes separate. GPTBot belongs to the training group; OAI-SearchBot belongs to AI search.

GoogleOther and Googlebot appear in the warehouse search grouping. That grouping does not mean every request was for ranking.

Tampa keeps the report honest

BellyUp! Tampa suffered a sharp Google visibility loss while its pages remained technically accessible. A separate investigation found sampled interior pages were crawled but not indexed.

The protocol passing does not guarantee that Google will index a page. Tampa stays in the report because a network average should not hide a city that needs attention.

More bot requests can be the wrong win

BellyUp! also had a crawler loop in filtered URLs. The October 31 repair removed combinations that kept leading crawlers through near-duplicate views.

After that repair, a lower training-crawler total can mean less wasted crawling. We care about the real pages reached and what happens next.

What We Kept

What BellyUp! Discoverability teaches us

It is fair to say Digital Karma has strengthened discoverability across our portfolio. The content has a consistent public structure that is checked on the rendered pages, and named crawlers request the files.

BellyUp! adds a positive exposure trend to that story. It does not give us a percentage of growth caused by the protocol alone.

The next planned read is November 20, using the latest complete source dates then available. We will keep the same older group and mark new content and technical changes beside its results.

Distinct canonical pages reached by search and AI crawlers belong beside the Google results. Reader actions belong in another reading where collection is available and verified.

The AI Digital Karma progress article explains the portfolio decision. The Digital Karma Web implementation report connects the results to the protocol and its checks.

AISymantix now tracks the search and crawler readings from the live warehouse. Its rolling tables sit beside this dated report so the next result can support or challenge the theory.

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