Case study · Law · Law firm · Anonymous client
“We’re happy with the numbers.” Really?
A Paris lawyer was worried about her website. Her agency kept saying the numbers were good. We audited the site, fixed what needed fixing and put a new technical foundation online, while the site kept the same look. To protect the client, this case study is anonymous.
By Nicolas Mathieu, founder of ClairAI. Published on , updated on .
292URLs returning 404 errors found in search data
- 292URLs returning 404 found in search data
- 97text fixes, across 32 files
- 259old URLs redirected (301)
- 91URLs cleanly removed (410)
The problem
“We’re happy with the numbers”: that was the answer from the agency managing the site. Yet the copy contained typos and grammar mistakes, links led to dead pages, and “Lorem ipsum” filler paragraphs were still showing on key pages.
Search data showed 292 URLs returning 404 errors, including what appeared to be legacy spam URLs. Flattering traffic figures can hide a website you would not dare show a client.
ClairAI carried out the audit, the migration and the fixes.
What we built
An audit before any decision
The site was audited: typos, dead links, filler text and the URLs Google knows about. The report was handed to the lawyer with the decisions to make.
97 fixes across 32 files
Spelling, grammar, punctuation, missing words, broken markup: only objective mistakes were fixed. The lawyer’s style remains her own, word for word.
Every old URL gets an answer
259 old URLs now permanently redirect (301) to the right page. 91 removed pages return 410, which tells Google clearly that they are gone. Spam URLs were not carried over.
Same look, new foundation, editor planned
The site keeps its visual identity. It now runs on Astro, hosted on Cloudflare, and is simpler to maintain. An editor is planned so she can update her own copy.
The result
The new site is live: the copy is corrected, old URLs redirect to the right page and the “Lorem ipsum” filler is gone. The lawyer has since entrusted the ongoing work on her site to ClairAI.
The first result is the audit itself: what was hidden behind “the numbers are good” is now listed, fixed or redirected.
The 292 URLs are addresses known to search data that returned 404 on the old site: a historical finding, not a current loss of traffic. No performance score is claimed here.
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