What is estimated impact?

Estimated impact is the plus-visits-per-month figure on every recommendation in Opportunities: RankDots’ estimate of what that one specific action - writing the page, expanding it, splitting it - could add to your monthly traffic. It exists to rank your to-do list, and it is an estimate, not a promise.

Where you see it

Every recommendation carries it. In the recommendation’s details, it appears as Estimated impact, in visits per month, with an info icon beside it. In the recommendations table, the same figure is the Potential visits/mo column, which you can sort by. It also rolls upward: each category tile shows the combined visits per month of the recommendations inside it, and the banner at the top adds everything into what your opportunities are worth up to, per month. 

Some recommendations break the figure down further: a Split page recommendation shows the estimated gain per topic, and the total is their sum.

What it is built from

Unlike the estimates in your plan, this one knows your site. As the Opportunities screen itself says, traffic estimates are based on Google Search Console data - your real pages, positions, impressions and clicks - combined with the search demand around the topic. The figure is then specific to the action: what a new dedicated page could bring in, what expanding this page’s coverage could unlock, what each topic could gain from a split. How estimated impact is calculated [link is coming] goes through the calculation on a live recommendation.

Estimated impact and potential traffic

The two figures do the same job - putting a number on “is this worth doing?” - on different ground:

Before you connect Search Console, potential traffic is the only number you have. After you connect it, estimated impact is the sharper of the two for deciding what to do next, because it starts from where your site actually stands.

What it assumes - and what it does not promise

The estimate assumes you carry out the recommendation, that the resulting content or restructuring is genuinely good, and that search demand and the results pages behave roughly as they do today. Every one of those can move, in either direction.

So read it the way it is built to be read. It is a ranking signal: a recommendation estimated at hundreds of visits per month deserves your attention before one estimated at a handful. It is not a delivery date, and not a quota - if you act on a recommendation and the visits do not arrive on schedule, no promise was broken, because none was made. The number said “do this first”, and that is all it said.

Treat the banner total the same way: it is the sum of every opportunity found, not a commitment about what your site will earn.

What next

• How estimated impact is calculated [link is coming]
• What is potential traffic?