SparkToro Blog

Posts by Rand Fishkin:

5-Minute Whiteboards Industry Marketing Zero Click

Traffic Is Down; Revenue Is… Up?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s weird times in the digital marketing universe. For decades, traffic and sales went together like peanut butter and jelly, cacio and pepe, palak and paneer. But, in the last few years, we’ve seen a deeply strange trend where the two have become unbound. In example after example, traffic can fall while revenue rises. Why is this happening? And is…
5-Minute Whiteboards Content Marketing Industry Marketing Zero Click

Why Do We Need Zero Click Marketing?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
You’ve heard of zero click marketing — and yes, you definitely heard it here first. We’re talking about creating standalone value in the platforms where people hang out, instead of dropping teasers and links in hopes that people will be compelled to click over to your site. It’s marketing where people already are and speaking to them in a way…
5-Minute Whiteboards Marketing Research Tactics

The Biggest Mistake We Make When Asking: “Where Are My Customers?”

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s January, and that means many marketers are tasked with a project to identify new channels and sources of influence for new potential investments. This year is likely more active than most given the decline of Google search traffic, the rise of AI, the Twitter exodus, and the meteoric growth of Threads and Bluesky. But, far too many times, we…
Data Product SparkToro

Are your customers switching to AI tools (and how much)? SparkToro’s new Search & AI Tools feature has the answers

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
There is a lot of activity moving to LLMs and generative AI tools right now, and for marketers, founders, and creators, the questions are almost always the same: Are my customers moving from traditional methods of discovery to these platforms? If so, how much? Starting today, SparkToro has the answers. Using clickstream panels from our partners at Datos, we’re able…
Data Industry Marketing Research SEO

New Research: We analyzed 332 million queries over 21 months to uncover never-before-published data on how people use Google

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Google is a massive presence on the modern web. They’ve held 90%+ of the global search market share for 15 years. Even the rise of AI tools has been unable to budge that number (so far). They get <9% of all web visits, but send more than 60% of all referring traffic to other sites. Google is certainly one of…
Advertising Content Marketing Industry Marketing Psychology Tactics

If your audience’s sources of influence and your marketing budget don’t align, you’re gonna have a bad time

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Yes, this is a rant. It’s a rant about where leadership teams allocate their marketing budget vs. where their potential customers actually pay attention. For most, that’s heavily in digital performance ads (Meta, Google, Apple, and if you’re in e-commerce, Amazon/Pinterest), a healthy amount in social media/brand ads (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, maybe Reddit), and then a bit of “content marketing,”…
Personal Startups

Snackbar Studio Raised $2.15M Using SparkToro’s Funding Model (and we’re open sourcing the docs)

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Since SparkToro’s founding in 2018, I’ve been been passionately loud about our unique funding model (becase it’s a really good idea.) The model focuses on chill work, sustainability over growth-at-any-cost, and offers investors and founders a lower-risk way to benefit from long-term, profitable operation. Several companies and funds have used our structure to raise money since, including accelerator program TinySeed…
Content Marketing Product SparkToro

NEW: Topics, Interests, and Content Ideas Now Live in SparkToro V2

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Starting today, SparkToro V2 has an entirely new capability—The Topics Section—that adds massive value for content strategy, content creation, and/or audience research applications. In fact, this new data is what our customers told us (in a September survey) was the most valuable missing piece in the product: Let me show you what it can do, and why I’m so excited…

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