Month: January 2026

AI/LLMs Data Research

NEW Research: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products; marketers should take care when tracking AI visibility

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
The Problem: For the last few years, companies have been investing inordinate sums into AI tracking and AI visibility for their brands and products. $100M+/yr is already estimated to be spent on this new version of search analytics and yet, I could find absolutely no research showing whether AI tools are consistent enough, when prompted for lists of brand/product recommendations,…
Content Marketing Marketing Tactics

Vibes Meet Facts: Write Like the Smart Human You Are, Not the LLM Making Stuff Up Again

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
If you were to perceive the world based on a skim of my Threads feed this morning, then you would be convinced that absolutely everyone is engrossed with the Beckham family drama, the only other pressing matter at hand is whether to recline your airplane seat, and the cost of $0.79 for a garlic bulb is exorbitant to the point…
AI/LLMs Product SparkToro

Starting today anyone can analyze any (describable) audience in SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Until now, if you wanted to research an audience with SparkToro, you needed to choose a particular website, a search keyword, or a URL to analyze…. No more. As of today’s launch, we’re now providing the ability to describe, in natural language, any audience, with any restrictions or specificity you want, and get data about their demographics and behaviors. You…
5-Minute Whiteboards Research Zero Click

How to Overcome the “Link in Comments” Problem on LinkedIn and Other Social Platforms

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Those pesky, anti-link, pro-native-content social platforms are at it again, muzzling the visibility of links anywhere and everywhere they can. Sure, they occasionally let something especially high-performing through, but as we learned when Twitter open-sourced its algo, these systems intentionally and consistently demote content with links… But… Amanda and I have been working on ways to outsmart these systems for…
Startups

Where Agency Revenue Is Heading: Fewer Big Retainers, More Mid-Market Retainers, and Longer Engagements

Paddy MooganBy Paddy Moogan
Recently, Rand and I released the results of the State of Digital Agencies survey for 2025. Our goal of this annual survey is simple – get a temperate check on the digital agency world and give folks a benchmark for how they’re performing compared to their peers. If you missed the launch post, you can catch up on it here:…
AI/LLMs Industry Marketing Predictions Psychology Zero Click

The 5 Big Trends that Will Dominate Marketing in 2026

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I find most end-of-year prediction and crystal ball-gazing listicles to be trash. They don’t prove their assertions, use anecdotes rather than data at scale to back up their prognostications, and, worst of all, fail to grade their previous predictions (how the #$%@ else do you know if you can trust their current ones?!). And yes, I’m looking at you, Gartner,…

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