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  • LBD #013: A Boring Calculator Site Is Too Big For Any Search Engine to Steal Traffic From

LBD #013: A Boring Calculator Site Is Too Big For Any Search Engine to Steal Traffic From

Future-proof your business without primarily relying on 'content'

Author

Shubham Davey
June 01, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Imagine a tool so boring that it feels like you’re in 2005. But what if I tell you that boring tool gets 190M visitors from the US alone.

Ranks #1 for one of the most searched keywords and makes a stupid-crazy amount of money with Google AdSense.

In this issue #013, I bring you RapidTables.

A super boring HTML site that search engines can never defeat, even with AI by their side.

Talk about future-proofing 🔥

Business Model

The business model is simple; it hosts various calculators and makes money via Google AdSense. No logins, no upsells.

I checked to find some estimates around Rapid Tables' earnings. I couldn’t find anything recent, but I calculated the estimated earnings from Google AdSense’s Revenue Calculator.

The maximum page views in the calculator is 10 million a month, and Rapid Tables has nearly ~50 million page views every month (15.64×3.35).

So, for the sake of estimating revenue, I have calculated for 10 million pageviews.

The actual earnings would be at least 5x more.

The most underrated part of an SEO strategy is a marketers ability to root their recommendations in search intent. Do this and you can unlock opportunities for SEO full funnel.

If you want to learn how matching search intent makes you almost invincible even with AI overviews & AI mode, continue reading.

SEO Lessons To Learn From Rapid Tables:

#1 On-Page SEO:

Rapid Tables have solid internal links. The average pageviews per visitor is 3.35. That is, each visitor views at least 3 other pages.

The domain ranks #1 for keywords like “cm to feet“ which has a search volume of 1.8M globally.

Estimated traffic to this page for this keyword is 200k every single month. JUST THIS PAGE ALONE.

The page also ranks #1 for pretty much all variations of the target keyword. That’s another few hundred thousand visitors a month.

One thing I loved about the tool is the content that goes with the tool page.

Every tool page has a full explanation of the calculation that runs behind the tool.

The page describes the units to be converted by the tool and the detailed conversion calculation, including the formula & examples.

This is great for those who want to learn the conversion without calculators.

How can search engines steal traffic from such good content pages with such a great user experience?

With AI, such sites will lose traffic, I thought.

But the traffic to Rapid Tables exploded in 2023, a peak year for the AI era.

Rapid Tables gets most visitors from the US, followed by India.

I did some brainstorming on the reason for this.

Here’s what I think could be the reasons:

  1. Habit and Simplicity: Many people are used to typing “cm to inches” or “grade calculator” into Google and clicking the first result. RapidTables loads instantly, gives a clear answer, and doesn’t require app downloads or logins.

  2. Students and Learners: Students (especially in the 18-24 age group, which is RapidTables’ largest demographic) use these calculators for homework, assignments, and quick checks, often preferring a direct web tool over AI apps that might overcomplicate things or require more steps.

  3. Professionals and Office Workers: People in offices, engineering, finance, or education need quick conversions or calculations (hex to decimal, binary to decimal, etc.) and want a reliable, ad-free experience without distractions.

  4. Non-Tech-Savvy Users: There’s a big group of users who have smartphones and internet but aren’t aware of or comfortable with AI tools. They trust simple websites that do one thing well.

  5. People Who Value Accuracy and Speed: Even with AI, users sometimes just want a single, accurate answer, no chat, no explanations, no extra steps. Online calculators provide that with minimal friction.

#2 Off-Page SEO:

This is the best part. Rapid Tables has a Domain Rating of 82, which is massive for such a simple site. Several VC-backed, handsomely funded businesses struggle to cross a DR 30.

On the other hand, Rapid Tables has gained backlinks naturally. Over 16k referring domains and over 200k backlinks, this is too good for such a simple site.

Rapid Tables has backlinks from, to name a few:

Mind you, these are all dofollow links, meaning these links pass SEO authority to the Rapid Tables, signalling search engines to trust the domain.

Each linking domain has DR 98 & 99.

This is priceless for any site. Startups would pay any amount of money for links from such high authority domains.

Rapid Tables has gained these links for free and has been enjoying them for years now.

#3 Technical SEO:

I never loved decoding technical SEO as much as I did for Rapid Tables, yet.

The whole site is a group of HTML pages, doing one thing exponentially good, loading faster.

You can literally save the pages as HTML files and run the calculators locally. Clean, simple HTML code pages for smooth loading.

Considering the number of pageviews, loading speeds have to be top-notch.

The traffic share report says that over 64% of visitors come from desktop devices.

The Core Web Vitals report for Desktop & Mobile is a dream for any SaaS founder.

For mobile, the numbers are slightly higher but way better than several well-funded startups.

However, there are no schemas for any page. This could be something to improve upon.

Rapid Tables might not need it, but you don’t make the mistake of excluding schema for your product/service.

Furthermore, the bounce rate is a bit of a concern. Reports say 68.69% of users bounce off and move to other search results.

Here’s a pictorial representation of traffic sources & visitors’ journey

27.2% of visitors go to the competitor’s site, unitconverters.net. Digging into the reasons could reveal shocking insights.

The reasons could range from user experience to results comparisons.

If you too have such traffic diversions, I highly recommend digging reasons behind this. You could be gifting potential customers to your competitors.

Use Semrush’s Position Tracking to find where you’re losing & optimize from there.

Rapid Tables have the luxury of traffic without any active content marketing, but you don’t make that mistake.

Sure, such tools are a great way to build irreplaceable links, but content is your chance of converting a visitor into a customer. Rapid Tables has nothing to sell, so they don’t have to worry about conversions.

What can you do now?