Forem: Mohammed Ashraf

How I fixed 0% CTR on pages that were already ranking on Google

Mohammed Ashraf — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:39:00 +0000

Running AnonPolls as a solo founder. This week I pulled GSC data
and found something frustrating: multiple pages ranking positions
8-16 with hundreds of impressions and literally zero clicks.

The pages weren't broken. Google trusted them enough to show them.
Users just weren't choosing them.

Here's what I changed and why.

The problem

My /blog/anonymous-polls-microsoft-teams page:

370 impressions last week
Position 10.46
0 clicks

Title was: "How to Run Anonymous Polls in Microsoft Teams
(No Add-ins Required)"
Meta was: "Run anonymous polls directly in Microsoft Teams
without installing add-ins..."

Technically fine. Functionally invisible.

What I was missing

The searchers typing "are teams polls anonymous" don't want
a how-to. They want confirmation that Teams polls aren't
truly anonymous — and a solution to that.

The meta that converts isn't the one that describes your product.
It's the one that answers the searcher's specific question
in the first 8 words.

The fix

New title: "Teams Anonymous Poll — No Add-in Needed | AnonPolls"
New meta: "Teams' built-in polls aren't truly anonymous.
Use a free AnonPolls link — no add-in, no signup, real-time results."

The first sentence of the meta answers the searcher's fear directly.

The pattern across 6 pages

I applied the same logic to 5 other zero-click pages:

/anonymous-employee-survey: Meta now opens with "Are employee surveys really anonymous? Yours will be."
/yes-no-poll: Meta now opens with "Need a quick yes or no?"
/team-decision-poll: Meta ends with "let results speak, not politics"

Every winning meta opens with the user's frustration,
not the product's features.

Early results

Too soon for data (just deployed). Will update this post
next week with CTR changes.

If you're building a SaaS with content pages — pull your
GSC data filtered to "impressions > 50, clicks = 0."
That's your leverage list.

Built with: React, Neon Postgres, Hostinger
Tool: Google Search Console (free)

From 38% to 58% Activation Rate in One Week — The Single UX Change That Did It

Mohammed Ashraf — Sun, 17 May 2026 15:50:24 +0000

Last month, 38% of polls created on AnonPolls got at
least one vote.

This week it's 58%.

No new traffic. No new features. No marketing campaign.

One UX change in a single afternoon.

Here's what happened.

The problem I was ignoring

AnonPolls is a free anonymous
polling tool — no signup for creators or voters. People
create polls and share them via link or QR code.

I was tracking a metric I called "activation rate" —
the percentage of polls created that received at least
one vote.

For weeks it sat at 38%. That meant 62% of polls were
created and never voted on.

I assumed this was a distribution problem. People were
creating polls but not sharing them effectively. My plan:
drive more traffic, get more creators, some of them would
share better.

I was wrong about the cause.

What the data actually showed

When I looked more carefully at the user flow, I noticed
something. A lot of visitors were landing on poll pages
— they had received the shared link. They arrived.
They just weren't voting.

The drop-off was happening on the poll page itself,
not before it.

I watched a few Hotjar recordings. The pattern was clear:

Users landed on a poll page. They could immediately see
the current results — which option was leading, by how
much, how many people had voted. They read the results.
Then they left without voting.

They got the answer without participating.

The anchoring problem

There's a well-documented cognitive bias called the
anchoring effect. When people see existing data before
making a decision, that data disproportionately
influences their choice.

In the context of polls:

If someone sees "Option A is leading 70% to 30%" before voting, they're more likely to vote for Option A (bandwagon effect) or decide their vote won't change anything (futility effect)
Either way, the visible results are reducing honest participation

The same problem exists in workplace surveys and
classroom polls. When people can see what others
answered, they stop answering for themselves.

The fix

I implemented vote-first display.

The logic:

// Before rendering poll results, check vote status
const { data: voteStatus } = useQuery({
  queryKey: ['voteStatus', pollId, userIdentifier],
  queryFn: () => checkVoteStatus(pollId)
});

// Only show results if user has already voted
const showResults = voteStatus?.hasVoted || poll.isClosed;

Simple in principle:

If you haven't voted → you see the question and options as clickable buttons, no results visible
After you vote → results appear immediately
If the poll is closed → results are always visible (voting is over, results are public)

One additional change: I stopped showing per-option vote
counts on poll cards in the browse page. Previously cards
showed "Option A: 67% — Option B: 33%". This spoiled the
result before someone even clicked through to vote.

Cards now show the question, total vote count, and a
"Vote Now" button. Options are listed but without counts.

The result

Activation rate: 38% → 58% in one week.

Avg votes per poll: 1.4 → 2.3 in the same week.

No new traffic. The same visitors, the same polls, the
same sharing patterns. Just removing the thing that was
killing their motivation to participate.

Why this took me so long to fix

I was measuring the wrong thing.

I was watching total votes and total polls. Both were
growing, slowly. Nothing looked obviously broken.

It took tracking activation rate specifically — polls
getting at least one vote as a percentage of polls created
— to surface the problem clearly.

Once I saw 62% of polls were dying with zero votes, the
question became: where in the flow is this happening?
Only then did I look at the poll page experience and
find the actual cause.

The lesson: build the metric that measures your core
value delivery, not just volume.

For a polling tool, volume metrics (total polls, total
votes) tell you how busy the system is. The activation
rate tells you whether the product is actually working.

One more thing

The same principle applies beyond polling tools.

If your product shows aggregate data, leaderboards,
or other people's activity before the user has done
the thing you want them to do — you might be creating
the same problem.

Social proof is powerful for conversion. But visible
outcomes before participation can kill the participation
itself.

Test hiding it. The results might surprise you.

AnonPolls is free, no signup
for anyone. If you're building something that needs
honest anonymous feedback — team retros, classroom
check-ins, group decisions — give it a try.

And if you've hit a similar activation problem in your
own product, I'd love to hear how you diagnosed it in
the comments.

How I Built a Truly Anonymous Polling Tool — And Why "Anonymous" Usually Isn't

Mohammed Ashraf — Thu, 14 May 2026 09:31:43 +0000

I built AnonPolls — a free
anonymous polling tool where neither the creator nor
the voter needs an account.

This post covers why I built it, the technical decisions
behind "true" anonymity, and what I learned growing it
to 1,500+ votes in 3 months as a solo founder.

The problem with "anonymous" surveys

Most polling tools that claim anonymity have a catch.

Google Forms — if your organisation has "Restrict to
[domain] users" enabled, the form owner can see individual
responses tied to Google accounts. "Anonymous" is a UI
label, not a technical guarantee.

Microsoft Teams polls — via Microsoft Forms, tenant
admins can view individual responses depending on your
organisation's settings. This is documented in Microsoft's
own support pages.

SurveyMonkey free tier — shows individual responses
to the survey creator.

The pattern: tools call themselves anonymous because
voters don't see each other's responses. But the creator
or an admin can still identify individuals.

What "truly anonymous" actually means technically

For AnonPolls, I made two architectural decisions:

1. No accounts — for anyone

Most tools require the creator to have an account. That
account is linked to every poll they create. Even if
voters are anonymous to each other, the creator's identity
is attached to the data.

AnonPolls requires no account for the creator either.
No email, no OAuth, no session tied to an identity.

2. IP hashing, not IP storage

For vote deduplication (preventing someone voting twice),
I need to track something. But storing raw IPs creates a
privacy risk — even "anonymized" IPs can sometimes be
reverse-engineered.

Instead I use HMAC-SHA256 hashing on the IP before storage:

import crypto from 'crypto';

function anonymizeIp(ip: string): string {
  const secret = process.env.IP_HASH_SECRET;
  return 'anon.' + crypto
    .createHmac('sha256', secret)
    .update(ip)
    .digest('hex')
    .substring(0, 12);
}

The hash is one-way. Even if someone accessed the database,
they couldn't reverse the hash back to an IP address.

The result: even the poll creator — even me as the
platform operator — cannot identify who voted for what.

Stack

Frontend: React 18 + TypeScript + Vite + Tailwind + Radix UI + shadcn
Backend: Node.js + Express + TypeScript
Database: Neon serverless Postgres + Drizzle ORM
AI: Google Gemini API for poll generation
Hosting: Hostinger (Node.js + LiteSpeed)

What I learned about distribution

The product was live for 2 months before I paid serious
attention to distribution. Some things I learned:

Fix engagement metrics before promoting

My "activation rate" (polls getting at least 1 vote)
was 38%. I was driving traffic into a leaky funnel.

The single biggest fix: vote-first display — hiding
poll results until the user votes. Activation rate jumped
to 58% in one week. Avg votes per poll went from 1.4 to 2.3.

Only after fixing that did I start on SEO and community
outreach.

AI search is already real

I added llms.txt, WebApplication + FAQPage JSON-LD
schemas, and BlogPosting schema to blog posts. ChatGPT
and Microsoft Copilot started sending sessions within
one week.

Not a lot of traffic yet — but faster than I expected.

Long-tail keywords competitors ignore

"anonymous poll microsoft teams" — no major competitor
has a dedicated page for this. I wrote a blog post
targeting it and built a landing page. Both indexed
within a week.

Same for "anonymous poll whatsapp", "slido alternative
free", "strawpoll alternative".

Current numbers (month 3)

676 polls created
1,564 votes cast
90+ countries
Avg votes per poll: 2.3
Activation rate: 58%
AI agent traffic: ChatGPT + Copilot sending sessions

What's next

Building creator retention tracking (repeat creators
by anonymized IP hash), preparing a Pro tier, and
continuing the content + SEO engine.

If you're building something similar or have questions
about the anonymity implementation, happy to discuss
in the comments.

Try AnonPolls →