Your service page is current. Google shows residents a PDF

A resident searches Google for a council service, such as applying for a school place or booking a summer activity for their children. The first result from your site is not your service page. It is a PDF.

On a phone, that PDF is hard to read. They have to zoom and scroll sideways. It may be an old booklet, last season's programme or a policy document written for officers. There is no button to apply, book or report. So the resident gives up, guesses, or phones you.

The good news is that most councils get this right. For nearly every service we check, the council's own web page ranks above any PDF. This is one of the rarer problems we find, and a small number of councils have a page to look at.

Where it does happen, a few patterns stand out:

• Services with seasonal leaflets, such as leisure and holiday activity programmes and garden waste calendars, are the most likely to be affected.
• Adult social care and school places can be affected too, where a guide, booklet or delivery plan has been online for a long time and picked up links.
• Council housing can show an old "how to apply" leaflet above the page that explains how to join the housing register.
• It turns up more often on council sites in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and among some district councils. County, unitary, London and metropolitan councils rarely have it.

Because it is rare, it is easy to miss. It can also appear suddenly, for example when you upload a new programme or move to a new website, so it is worth checking from time to time.

A PDF usually beats a web page on Google for one of these reasons.

• The PDF has the content and the page does not. The service page is a short introduction with "Download our guide". All the useful detail, such as how to apply, who qualifies and the dates, is locked inside the PDF. Google ranks the PDF because it answers the question.
• The PDF has been online for years. Booklets about sending your child to school, or applying to the housing register, collect links from schools, charities and partners. Your newer web page has not built up the same trust.
• Seasonal files are uploaded every year. An Easter or summer programme, or a garden waste calendar, goes up as a new PDF each season. The file name often includes words like "programme", "calendar" or "final", which match what residents type.
• Files sit on old addresses. Documents stored on an old subdomain or in an image or uploads folder are often forgotten when the site is tidied, so they never get removed or redirected.
• Officer documents are public. Strategies, delivery plans and team leaflets are published for transparency. They use the same words as the service, so Google can show them to residents looking for help.