Five channels, checked live on 9 October 2026. Every line traces to a source captioned on the page.
| Channel | Mark Daniel & Co | Liston Newton | FJ Partners | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google rankings 6 money searches | Page one on 0 of 6 | Page one on 2 of 6 | Page one on 0 of 6 | One firm holds the search results. It is not you, and it is not the firm buying the ads. |
| Google Ads Transparency Centre, AU | 0 ads on record | 0 ads on record | 1 ad in the auction | The only firm paying for these searches ranks on none of them. Nobody is defending the position they hold. |
| Meta Ads Ad Library, active now | No ads found | No ads found | No ads found | No accounting firm in this comparison is in the feed. That is an open door, not a loss. |
| Landing page Where the click lands | Two forms, phone links | Five forms, FAQ schema | Site served to people only | Your home page asks for the enquiry and gives a phone number. That part is already built. |
| Reputation Google rating (reviews) | 5.0 (36 reviews) | 5.0 (27 reviews) | 5.0 (3 reviews) | You hold more reviews than either firm here. Reputation is not the leak in this funnel. |
You are not on page one for any of the six searches a Melbourne business owner types when they go looking for an accountant. Liston Newton is on page one twice for a single search, and once more on the tax agent term. The only paid ad in the auction comes from FJ Partners, a firm that ranks on none of them. Your home page already has two forms and three phone links, so the leak is above the site, not inside it.
Positions read live from Google Australia on 9 October 2026, not estimated.
| Search term | Searches / mo | Mark Daniel & Co | Liston Newton | FJ Partners |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| accountant melbourne | High est. | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 |
| tax agent melbourne | High est. | Not in top 10 | #4 | Not in top 10 |
| small business accountant melbourne | Medium est. | Not in top 10 | #1 and #2 | Paid only |
| tax return melbourne | High est. | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 |
| accounting firm melbourne | Medium est. | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 |
| bookkeeper melbourne | Medium est. | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 | Not in top 10 |
Liston Newton holds the first two organic results for the small business term and one of them is not even a suburb page. That is a firm with enough authority signal to take two positions on one query. You are competing with the page, not the practice.
The chain, with every assumption written down. Deliberately conservative.
The six searches in this report at an example volume a city this size supports. An example, not a measured figure.
The clicks you do not get today, once those pages sit around position three, rounded down.
Enquiries at 5% of those visits, rounded down.
Enquiries, not engaged clients. What an extra client is worth is your number, not mine.
Halve the example volume and it is still two or three enquiries a month who are not finding you. The searches happen whether or not you rank. Today they ring whoever is on page one.
Estimates, not promises. Each assumption is deliberately conservative so the number holds up.
Rework the service pages that already exist, put the practice's own credentials where Google can read them, and go after the two terms where the page one results are directories rather than firms.
| Advertiser | Ads on record | Last ran | Headline seen | Lands on | Offer on the page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liston Newton | 0 | Nothing on record | Nothing running | listonnewton.com.au | Five forms and a free strategy session |
| FJ Partners | 1 | Active | Small Business Accountant | fjgpartners.com.au | Award winning accountants, no visible offer |
| Mark Daniel & Co | 0 | Nothing on record | Nothing running | markdanielco.com.au | Two forms on the home page |
Neither markdanielco.com.au nor listonnewton.com.au has a single ad on record in Google's Transparency Centre. The paid slot on the small business term is not held by a local firm at all: this report's snapshot caught FJ Partners buying it, and a second check minutes later served My Tax Guy, an online tax service, in the same place. National online players are buying the searches the local firms are leaving alone.
Your home page already carries two forms and three clickable phone numbers, which is more capture than the firm buying the ad appears to offer. The difference is that nobody is arriving.
Nobody in this market is running a Meta headline, so the first firm to test one owns the feed by default
The accounting searches return ads from software vendors and unrelated exporters, which means the local market has not tested the feed at all. There is no rival creative to beat.
For an accounting firm a client photo, a plain headline about the deadline and the practice's own review count will outperform anything a software vendor is running.
Why this matters: a stronger headline and hook lifts click-through. Higher click-through lowers what Meta charges per click. Cheaper clicks mean more visits from the same budget, and more visits mean more enquiries. The feed is the cheapest test available to you, and no competitor is standing in it.
Liston Newton holds positions one and two there. The pages exist on your site and need the targeting and the authority that query rewards.
Liston Newton leads with a free strategy session and FJ Partners buys the click with no offer at all. Your consultation page exists; give it a name and a promise.
Two of the six searches are topped by a forum and a government page rather than a competing firm. Those are the cheapest page one wins on this list.
No accounting firm in this comparison runs Meta ads. The first one to test owns the feed by default.
You hold more reviews than either firm compared here, and your pages carry no review markup while Liston Newton's do. The proof exists, Google cannot see it.
If you want the same treatment applied to the whole funnel, the next step is a working session. I will take this report apart line by line, show you where the enquiries are leaking and what the first 90 days look like.
Book a time with DeanAt 18 I started a corporate events company doing photo booths, DJing and photography. I could not afford an agency, so I taught myself web development, Meta Ads, Google Ads and SEO off YouTube, got myself to number one on Google, and took it to roughly $300,000.
Everything in this report I can read because I have spent my own money on the exact channels it covers. What follows is not theory. It is what I would fix first.
Founded at 18. Self-taught SEO to a number one ranking and grew it to roughly $300k.
Worked on accounts including MYOB, Heatstrip and i3Group.
Inside Sabri Suby's agency, working on multi-million dollar and international accounts.
MBA search for RMIT, Canberra, Victoria University and Southern Cross.
Rebuilt their SEO service. Four times the clients and three times the team in nine months.
Founded Results Media. Co-authored The Untold Secrets to Ranking #1 On Google.
