August 2026

No Brevo email marketing send went out in August, and that single fact explains almost every number in this report. Referral sessions collapsed to 64 (from 3,082 in July, and every other month this year bar February and April had a send of some size), and with it went the usual sea of low-engagement landing-page visits. What's left is a genuinely quiet but healthy month: engagement rate at 41.7% is the highest of the year so far, well above even July 2025's comparable quiet month. This is the closest this report has come to showing the site's true organic baseline with nothing else layered on top.

With no Brevo send this month, Referral is a fraction of its usual size and, for the first time this year, made up almost entirely of real sources rather than the untagged email link-tracking domain — hence the healthy 62.5% engagement rate on this channel, a world away from the 1–3% it usually carries in a send month. This is exactly what the site's Referral traffic looks like without the email marketing layered on top, and it's worth keeping this month as the reference point for what "normal" Referral should read like once UTM tagging is eventually fixed.

This is the strongest artist-page engagement rate all year at 58.5%, comfortably ahead of every send month and even ahead of most non-send months. Conrad Bauer and Ben Perry both average over 4 minutes on page this month, a genuine signal of real portfolio browsing rather than the near-zero readings that dominate this section most months.

Average position eased further to 34.6, the softest reading of the year, extending the decline seen since March. Branded search share came back down slightly from July's 69% to 65%, still well above the January–April norm. CTR held flat month on month and is comfortably ahead of last August, which is a small positive against an otherwise soft month for search.

Every artist's session count fell sharply month on month, which is expected with no send driving traffic to their pages — this table now reads much closer to genuine, unforced interest than in any send month this year. Kell Mitchell's year-on-year comparison stands out as a real decline worth a look (120 sessions last August to 46 this August), since last year's figure also wasn't spike-distorted.

A quiet but steady month for Contact — sessions eased back on July but engagement rate held essentially flat and average time on page actually improved. Broadly in line with last August too. Nothing here suggests Contact activity depends on the email send in the way overall session volume clearly does.

No new articles this month, following July's three. The Journey of Two Female Entrepreneurs keeps extending its all-time lead and remains the only article that shows up reliably in Search Console's top pages every single month this year.

Both partner sites down slightly on July but well within the range seen most months, and unaffected by the absence of the email send — consistent with every month so far, since this traffic has always been homepage-driven rather than campaign-driven.

Art Buying's zero-session run reaches an eighth straight month. Film Funding held steady at 9 sessions for a second month running, its most consistent stretch of the year.