How a Four-Store Grocer Beat Wikipedia for “Apples”, and What Your Business Can Copy

On November 5, a guide to apple varieties from LaBonne's, a family grocer with four stores, reached #1 on Google in the US for the one-word search “apples”. It beat Wikipedia. James Berry at LLMrefs pieced together how it happened from ranking and link data. Here's what happened, what nobody knows yet, and what a local business can take from it. Read the LLMrefs case study

What happened

• April 8: the store publishes a guide to the types of apples on its blog.
• By early July: it's in Google's top 3 for “types of apples”.
• September 5: it shows up for “apples” in the US, at #14.
• October 7: up to #7, the same day a Google spam update finished.
• October 16: the page is rewritten (more on that below).
• Around October 20: new #1 spots for narrower searches like “tart apples”.
• November 5: #1 for “apples” in the US, and in the top 10 in 12 countries.

What changed on October 16

The rewrite kept every paragraph, the title, the web address and all the photos. What it added was a layer that makes the page quicker to use:

• A real heading for the sweetness section, where before it was only bold text.
• A chart ranking the apples from tart to sweet.
• A “Quick picks” box: which apples for pies and baking, which for snacking.
• A sweetness label and a “best for” note on each apple, plus short storage tips.
• More links, from 12 to 50, most of them to the store's own shop, recipes and delivery apps.

Within days, the page was in the top 10 for about 230 more searches.

What nobody knows yet

The case study is careful about this, and so are we. Nobody outside the store can prove the rewrite caused the jump. Only a few sites linked to the page, and two of those links came from Bing image-search pages that look like someone else's spam picked the guide up by accident, so it isn't clear whether Google counted them. A popular post on X on November 4 asking people to search “apples” may have helped too. And a #1 spot for a word this broad can fall as fast as it rose.

So treat it as a strong example, not a formula. The parts worth copying are the ones that would help any page, whether or not they explain this one.

Five things a local business can copy

1. Find searches where page 1 is thin. Look at what ranks now: short pages, generic blog posts and sites few others link to mean there's room. For a plumber, that might be “signs your water heater is failing”, not “plumber”.
2. Win the narrow searches first. The guide ranked for “types of apples” months before “apples”. Start with the specific questions your customers ask, and the broad search can follow.
3. Answer the decision the searcher is making. Most people searching “apples” want to know which apple to buy and what to use it for. Your customers are deciding something too: which option, what it costs, how long it takes. Put that answer near the top.
4. Make it easy to skim. Real headings (not just bold text), a short list of picks, a simple chart or table, and labels people can scan. It also makes it easier for AI assistants to lift a clear answer from the page.
5. Link to what you sell. The rewrite pointed readers to the store's shop and recipes. A guide on your site should lead to your service pages, your booking page and your locations.

What it means for AI answers

Ranking on Google helps with AI too, but AI picks its sources differently. In our November Local AI Index, we asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode 800 local questions. 62% of what they cited was a directory, a review site or a best-of list, and businesses' own websites got 29%. A good guide on your site is more likely to be quoted when it's laid out like the apple guide, with a clear answer, labels and a short list. For “best [trade] in [city]” questions, being listed well on the sites AI reads matters just as much. See the November Local AI Index

How Groow helps

Groow finds the searches where page 1 is beatable for you, and the narrower searches to win first. It checks your pages for real headings and a clear answer up top, and drafts the guide with gaps marked for the facts only you know. Once it's live, Groow tracks where it ranks and whether AI assistants quote it.