How perfume lab The Elixir doubled its Google traffic and got into the body of AI Overviews and ChatGPT answers

01Context and task

The Elixir Perfume Laboratory is a perfume lab with two locations: Kyiv (Gulliver mall) and Ivano-Frankivsk (Promprylad). It runs perfume-making workshops — solo, for two, group and on-site — and sells gift certificates, reed diffusers, car fragrances and custom scents for brands.

At the start, on 4 August 2026, traffic came mostly from the brand name and the homepage. In 30 days the service pages had 10 clicks and 544 impressions. Google showed the homepage for non-brand workshop and certificate queries instead of the page where a visitor could pick a format and book.

The second part of the task was AI answers. At the strategy session we saw that models describe the business as a lab and a workshop, while the site was betting on “bespoke perfume”. On top of that, answers about the brand kept repeating the wrong number of years in business.

02Hypothesis

03What we actually did

The base was classic SEO, and every content decision was checked against one question: can a machine take a self-contained passage from this page? That is GEO.

• Technical audit and a brief for the developer: redirects, canonical URLs, indexing.
• New service structure. A services hub and a workshops hub, separate pages for solo, couple, group and on-site formats, gift certificates and sets, perfumer kits. A “Perfume making” branch: personal composition, reed diffuser, car fragrance, scent for a brand, online creation. 26 pages in total, built from our briefs and texts; the client’s team published them.
• Answer first. Addresses, formats, duration, bottle sizes and prices as short statements at the top of each page.
• Experience signals: “About us” and “Our team” pages, a hub of the lab’s own cases.
• Shop and blog: descriptions for six categories, updated metadata, 11 articles on gifts and expertise, a Russian-language version of the pages.
• Brand facts. We checked what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overview say about The Elixir. The wrong years in business were removed from the site.
• Structured data: LocalBusiness with both locations on the homepage; Product and Person markup for service pages is in progress.
• External publications on topical sites about workshops, personal scents and gifts.

04Results in Google Search

We compare the 30 days before work began (05.07–03.08) with the latest 30 days with data (23.09–22.10).

Google Search Console · service, certificate and perfume-making pages

Pages that were barely visible before the start earned 268 clicks and 7,999 impressions in 30 days, versus 10 and 544.

• Whole site: 1,286 clicks instead of 589 and 24,944 impressions instead of 12,368; average position rose from 8.6 to 6.3.
• Without the news spike. Part of the growth came from the client’s “Scent of Donetsk” story — 121 clicks to that case page. Without it the site had 1,165 clicks, almost twice as many as before the start.
• Rankings. Of 163 tracked queries, 67 were in the TOP-10 and 101 are now; TOP-3 went from 25 to 49 in the first month of tracking.

05Evidence — Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT

We separate two states: the brand in the list of sources under the answer, and the brand named in the text a person reads. Below is the second. Each query was checked twice, on 21 and 24 October; the brand was in the answer both times. The screenshots are in Ukrainian, the language the queries were asked in.

Google AI Overview · query: «сертифікат на створення парфумів» (perfume-making gift certificate) · 24.10.2026

The first sentence of the answer cites The Elixir site, and the lab opens the “Popular options and prices” block, ahead of other workshops.

Google AI Overview · query: «парфумерний майстер клас івано-франківськ» (perfume workshop Ivano-Frankivsk) · 21.10.2026

The lab is named in the first sentence of the answer, and the client site is among the sources. On the repeat check the wording changed, the brand stayed.

Google AI Overview · query: «створення парфумів київ» (perfume making Kyiv) · 21.10.2026

The Elixir in the list of places, with the Gulliver mall address and formats. The price block relies on an Instagram post and shows the price before the increase — facts outside the site need aligning too.

The open gap in AI Overviews. For «майстер клас парфуми київ» (perfume workshop Kyiv) The Elixir is not in Google’s answer: Be Craft, Le Flacon and art studios are. ChatGPT puts the lab first for a close question — see below.

ChatGPT. The first snapshot was on 26 October, the repeat with a wider set on 5 November. We asked five questions in plain language, the way a gift buyer asks them, each in a new chat. In all five answers The Elixir comes first, alongside Be Craft, KatArtSys, Ol.factory and other workshops.

ChatGPT · “Perfume-making workshop in Kyiv — where to go?” · 05.11.2026

A query where AI Overviews does not show the brand yet: ChatGPT opens with The Elixir, labelled “My favourite”. Be Craft, KatArtSys and Ol.factory follow.

ChatGPT · “Where in Kyiv can I make my own perfume and buy a gift certificate?” · 05.11.2026

Same result as on 26 October: The Elixir first, “My favourite for a gift”. The answer closes with “I would choose The Elixir”.

ChatGPT · “Gift certificate for two to make perfume in Kyiv — what do you recommend?” · 05.11.2026

The Elixir appears in every row of the budget table, and the final advice is a certificate for two from The Elixir.

ChatGPT · “Perfume workshop in Ivano-Frankivsk: where can I make my own scent?” · 05.11.2026

The lab at Promprylad, labelled “Recommended”, with photos of the location. The answer names no other place where you can make your own scent.

ChatGPT · “Where to hold a hen party or birthday with a perfume workshop in Kyiv?” · 05.11.2026

“My favourite for a hen party”, plus a booking link to “The Elixir group workshop”. A separate group-format page was created within the project.

06Limitations

• No AI baseline. AI Overviews and ChatGPT answers were not recorded before 4 August, so we do not claim the brand appeared in them because of our work.
• Personalisation. Answers change between loads, regions and sessions. The screenshots are examples, not a full list of queries.
• Old prices. All three AI Overviews answers show prices from before the October increase: the model takes them from third-party sources.
• ChatGPT — five questions, two days. These are snapshots, not regular measurement; Perplexity and Gemini were not measured. ChatGPT does not bring traffic yet: 72 sessions from chatgpt.com in June and 14 for 1–19 October (GA4). Being named in an answer and getting clicks from it are different things.
• Attribution. The growth comes from new pages, content, technical fixes and the client’s own news together; we do not attribute it to one factor.

07Conclusion

The lab had demand before we started. What it lacked were pages Google could send that demand to. Once every service format got its own page with the facts up front, those pages earned more clicks in a few weeks than in the whole previous period, and AI Overviews and ChatGPT cite them in their answers.

The same answers show the limit: the model also collects facts outside the site — from Instagram, event listings, directories. So the next stage is to align prices and formats everywhere Google looks for confirmation, and to win the «майстер клас парфуми київ» query.