Four established
competitors.
One direction
of travel.
How a Dublin restaurant outranked The Ivy Collection, Hawksmoor, and Wilde on the terms that matter most — entering a market they had occupied for years. On a fixed monthly retainer. From a standing start.
Entering a market
already owned by
bigger operations.
When Moolah Media was engaged in August 2024, the four venues below had all established digital presence in Dublin's most competitive restaurant corridor. The comparison below is not between equals in terms of resources.
The Ivy Dawson Street is The Ivy Collection's Dublin outpost — a well-funded, high-profile operation with group marketing support from one of the UK's largest hospitality businesses behind it. Hawksmoor is a multi-site international chain with locations in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, New York, and Copenhagen — a brand with a global SEO profile built over years. Fade Street Social is a well-resourced Dublin institution with accumulated local authority.
Wilde is a prominent independent Dublin restaurant with its own established digital presence and following. These venues compete on completely different budget scales to a fixed monthly retainer.
The point is not outspending the competition. The point is that precision outperforms spend. On the most-searched discovery term for Dublin restaurants, a venue that did not rank at all 18 months ago now holds a position ahead of all four — on every search surface simultaneously.
What follows is the documented ranking data, the infrastructure that created it, and the commercial result it produced.
Position by position.
Term by term.
All rankings verified via Bright Local Local Finder. Data: 09 Feb 2026 vs 01 Sep 2025 baseline. Three surfaces tracked: Maps Pack (the commercially critical one), Organic Desktop, Organic Mobile.
10 tracked terms across three surfaces. Sep 2025 → Feb 2026. Δ = position movement in that window (+ = improvement).
| Surface | Keyword | CL Rank | Wilde | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maps Pack | best restaurants in dublin city centre | #7 new ↑ | #20 −14 ↓ | CL +13 ahead |
| Maps Pack | Restaurants | #13 new ↑ | #30 −21 ↓ | CL +17 ahead |
| Maps Pack | Dublin restaurants | #17 new ↑ | #16 −12 ↓ | CL rising, Wilde ↓ |
| Maps Pack | restaurants dublin city centre | #31 new ↑ | #32 −28 ↓ | CL just ahead |
| Organic · Desktop | best restaurants in dublin city centre | #14 +10 ↑ | #16 −1 ↓ | CL leads, desktop |
| Organic · Desktop | restaurants dublin city centre | #20 +3 ↑ | #22 −3 ↓ | CL leads |
| Organic · Desktop | Dublin restaurants | #26 −4 | — not ranking | Wilde absent |
| Organic · Mobile | best restaurants in dublin city centre | #16 +7 ↑ | #18 −4 ↓ | CL leads, mobile |
| Organic · Mobile | Dublin restaurant | #18 +1 ↑ | #13 −5 ↓ | Wilde holds, falling |
| Organic · Mobile | restaurants dublin | #36 −8 | #15 −5 ↓ | Wilde ahead |
The Ivy Collection's Dublin venue has group marketing infrastructure behind it. The comparison below is Maps Pack only — the surface that drives direction requests and walk-in traffic directly from a phone search.
| Keyword | CL Rank | CL Δ | Ivy Rank | Ivy Δ | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chequer Lane by Jamie Oliver | #1 | Stable | — | — | CL #1, Ivy absent |
| restaurants dublin city centre | #16 | +15 ↑ | #34 | new ↑ | CL +18 ahead |
| best restaurants in dublin city centre | #18 | −11 ↓ | — | — | CL only one ranking |
| restaurants dublin | #17 | +2 ↑ | #15 | new ↑ | Close — Ivy just ahead |
| Dublin restaurants | #18 | −1 ↓ | #12 | new ↑ | Ivy holds edge |
| Dublin restaurant | #50 | new ↑ | #31 | new ↑ | Both new, Ivy ahead |
| Restaurants | #13 | new ↑ | — | — | CL only one ranking |
The honest picture on The Ivy.
Chequer Lane leads on 4 of 7 tracked Maps Pack terms. The Ivy holds an edge on higher-volume generic terms — "Dublin restaurants" and "Dublin restaurant." The mechanism to close those gaps is Trust Flow improvement (currently TF 16, targeting 30+). This work is already in progress. The direction of travel is clear on every term where Chequer Lane is ranking.
The position tells
you where it is.
The delta tells you
where it's going.
Absolute ranking position is one data point. The rate of change over the same window is more instructive. One campaign has momentum. One does not.
Positions don't appear
without infrastructure.
Map pack rankings are not random. They are the downstream output of 18 months of citation building, authority acquisition, and profile management. Here is what was built.
Rankings are inputs.
Covers are outputs.
Map pack positions and organic rankings exist to put people in seats. All cover data sourced directly from the venue's OpenTable account — platform-verified, no modelling applied.
Fixed monthly retainer → 43× revenue return
Attribution is stated honestly. The restaurant's team, kitchen, and the Jamie Oliver brand carried significant weight — the other 50% of cover growth belongs to them entirely. Digital work claimed 50% of +12,503 additional covers at a conservative €50 floor spend.
The actual per-cover spend is €62.99. The conservative €50 floor underestimates the return — the 43× figure is the minimum defensible claim, not the ceiling. Break-even on this engagement: fewer than one evening's worth of additional covers per month. The venue exceeded that threshold in the first weeks. Everything beyond it is pure return.
Do you know where
you rank vs your
competitors?
A 15-minute audit will show you exactly where you sit on the terms your guests are actually searching — against every venue competing for the same covers. Whether we work together or not.
15-minute call. Ranking report included. No commitment.