Cheltenham Law Firm Digital Visibility Index — Q4-2026

Not every firm could be measured on every pillar (Q4-2026)

4 of the firms below are missing at least one pillar: Speed & CWV (6 of 8), Local presence (7 of 8), Content & trust (7 of 8). Where a pillar could not be measured for a firm it is excluded from that firm’s score and its remaining weights are renormalised, rather than scored zero — so those firms are ranked on less evidence than the rest, and their position should be read with that in mind. Affected: Willans, Pembridge Solicitors, Hine Solicitors, Setfords Cheltenham. See the methodology.

The PYC Cheltenham Law Firm Digital Visibility Index ranks 8 law firms in Cheltenham on how well they perform online — website speed, technical SEO, local presence, search visibility, AI search presence and content & trust — each scored 0–100 to a single Digital Visibility Score. Measured 3 October 2026 to the published methodology.

As of Q4-2026, 0% of the 6 law firms in Cheltenham measured on Speed & Core Web Vitals score below 50 on mobile (PYC Cheltenham Law Firm Digital Visibility Index, measured 3 October 2026).

Who owns the first page

Across 12 keywords there are 120 first-page organic slots. The firms in this index hold 16 of them (13.3%); 111 distinct domains appear in total.

this index (16)   directories, national chains and firms not indexed (104)

Ranking well but not currently indexed:

• reviewsolicitors.co.uk — 10 top-10 slots, best #2
• cdlaw.co.uk — 7 top-10 slots, best #1
• solicitors-barristers.co.uk — 5 top-10 slots, best #1
• legal-pages.co.uk — 4 top-10 slots, best #2
• tanners.co.uk — 4 top-10 slots, best #2

86.7% of the first page belongs to businesses outside this index — directories, national chains and local firms not tracked here. These firms are not mainly competing with each other.

The league table

#	Cheltenham Law Firm	Score	Spd	Tech	Local	Vis	AI	Cont
1	HCR Law	70	81	100	72	32	40	87
2	Willans	67	80	33	91	48	80	—
3	BPE Solicitors	65	66	88	75	39	20	100
4	Pembridge Solicitors	60	—	88	83	17	20	83
5	Davis Gregory	58	58	88	98	10	0	80
6	Hine Solicitors	56	—	100	74	4	0	95
7	Converse Law	54	62	63	81	30	0	79
8	Setfords Cheltenham	54	89	88	—	4	0	70

Which keywords are contested, and which are open?

Every firm against every keyword, shaded by position. Darker is stronger; blank means outside the top 100. Read down a column for a contested term, across a row for a firm's reach.

	law firms	best law firm	commercial solicitors	corporate law	employment law	dispute resolution	commercial property solicit…	litigation solicitors	business legal advice	law firms Montpellier	law firms Pittville	solicitors Montpellier
HCR Law		1				7	7		8
Willans	5				11		5		1
BPE Solicitors	12		8	1	14		6	9	3
Pembridge Solicitors					62			8	15			7
Davis Gregory							18		6
Hine Solicitors									40
Converse Law							3
Setfords Cheltenham							44

1–3 4–10 11–20 21+ absent

No firm in this index reaches the first page for “employment law Cheltenham”, “law firms Montpellier”, “law firms Pittville”. That is uncontested ground, and it is invisible in a league table.

Where each firm is visible

Where each firm is visible: ranked in the organic top 10 for at least one keyword, present in the local 3-pack, or named in at least one AI answer. 1 of 8 appear in all three.

23 1

Visible in	Firms	Which
All three channels	1	Willans
Organic + local pack	2	Davis Gregory, Converse Law
Organic + AI	3	HCR Law, BPE Solicitors, Pembridge Solicitors
Local pack + AI	0	—
Organic only	0	—
Local pack only	0	—
AI only	0	—
None of the three	2	Hine Solicitors, Setfords Cheltenham

1 of 8 firms are visible in all three channels. 2 appear in none of them.

Search visibility against AI presence

Search visibility against AI search presence. The dashed diagonal is parity; a firm far from it is strong in one channel and weak in the other.

horizontal: search visibility →   vertical: AI presence ↑

Willans is the widest split: AI engines name it far more readily than search surfaces it (AI 80, visibility 48). Those are different problems behind a similar overall score.

Closest to the first page

Ranked between #11 and #20 — one page from the first, ordered by how close.

Willans	Willans — employment law Cheltenham		#11
BPE Solicitors	BPE Solicitors — law firms Cheltenham		#12
BPE Solicitors	BPE Solicitors — employment law Cheltenham		#14
Pembridge Solicitors	Pembridge Solicitors — business legal advice Cheltenham		#15
Davis Gregory	Davis Gregory — commercial property solicitors Cheltenham		#18

5 winnable positions across 4 firms sit between #11 and #20 — one page off, and closer than any keyword the index does not already measure.

Reputation: reviews against rating

Google review volume (log scale) against average rating. Bubble size is review count.

horizontal: reviews (log) →   vertical: rating ↑

Review volume spans 34 to 211 and ratings 3.4 to 4.9, yet the Local pillar separates these firms by only 26 points — the raw figures discriminate where the score does not. Most reviews: Willans (211). Highest rating: Pembridge Solicitors (4.9).

What the keyword basket is asking

Search intent across the measured keyword basket, classified by DataForSEO. Every keyword in the basket carries the same intent, so this pillar measures one slice of the funnel rather than the whole journey.

commercial		12 of 12

Local pack coverage across the city

Local 3-pack for “solicitors near me” searched from 9 points on a 3×3 grid across a 7.5-mile square centred on 51.900, -2.080. North is up; each cell names its position and carries its coordinates and the firms found there. Each cell counts how many indexed firms hold a pack slot at that location; a chain counts wherever any of its branches appears. 2 of 9 points contain at least one indexed firm, and 2 of the 8 indexed firms appear somewhere on the grid.

N ↑

Indexed firms holding a local pack slot, by grid position from north-west to south-east

NWnorth-west, 51.954, -2.167 — no indexed firm in the pack here	Nnorth, 51.954, -2.080 — no result at this point	NEnorth-east, 51.954, -1.993 — no result at this point
Wwest, 51.900, -2.167 — no indexed firm in the pack here	·centre, 51.900, -2.080 — no indexed firm in the pack here	Eeast, 51.900, -1.993 — no indexed firm in the pack here
SWsouth-west, 51.846, -2.167 — no result at this point	1Ssouth, 51.846, -2.080 — Willans	2SEsouth-east, 51.846, -1.993 — Willans, Davis Gregory

3.7 miles between points

none 1 firm 2 3 of the pack

What changed since last quarter

Change between Q3-2026 and Q4-2026 on the 6 pillars measured in both quarters — Speed & CWV and Technical and Local presence and Visibility and AI search presence and Content & trust. The other pillars were not measured in Q3-2026, so no comparison is possible and none is drawn.

HCR Law		+67	Technical
BPE Solicitors		-40	AI search presence
Davis Gregory		+38	Technical
HCR Law		+32	Visibility
Willans		-32	Visibility
Pembridge Solicitors		-29	Visibility
Davis Gregory		-29	Visibility
Hine Solicitors		-29	Visibility
Setfords Cheltenham		-25	Visibility
Pembridge Solicitors		-20	AI search presence
Converse Law		-20	AI search presence
Setfords Cheltenham		-20	AI search presence

Hollow mark is Q3-2026, solid is Q4-2026. Showing the 12 largest of 27 changes. 17 readings unchanged and not drawn, across 8 firms that moved.

HCR Law moved furthest: Technical up 67 points since Q3-2026. 27 of 44 comparable readings changed at all — which is what a quarter of movement actually looks like.

Which law firm in Cheltenham has the best website?

HCR Law tops the Q4-2026 index with a Digital Visibility Score of 70/100. Each firm has a full diagnostic scorecard linked from the table above.

How this is measured

Every score follows the same six-pillar methodology: Speed & Core Web Vitals (20%), Technical foundation (20%), Local presence (20%), Visibility (15%), AI search presence (15%) and Content & trust (10%). Each pillar links to the knowledge-base article that explains what it measures; the statistical methods behind the scoring are written up separately. Download the full dataset: JSON · CSV.

Who publishes this

The index is compiled and published by PYC, a search consultancy run by Phil Yarrow. It exists because the questions it answers — who is actually visible in a local market, and by how much — were being answered with opinion. The collection and scoring code is open source, so any figure here can be recomputed rather than taken on trust.

Related reading on the practice behind the measurements: topical authority, generative engine optimisation, and case studies from comparable service businesses.

Using this data

This dataset is published under CC BY 4.0. You may reuse it, including commercially and in AI-generated answers, provided you credit Phil Yarrow (PYC) by name and link back. That credit is a condition of use, not a courtesy.

Phil Yarrow (PYC) — Local Digital Visibility Index. https://hub.pyc.agency/indices/

That one credit covers every dataset on this site — one figure or all of them. When quoting this particular dataset precisely, the fuller form is:

Phil Yarrow (PYC) — Local Digital Visibility Index: Cheltenham Law Firm, Q4-2026. https://hub.pyc.agency/indices/cheltenham-law-firms/

Full terms: licence and attribution.

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