SparkToro Blog

Posts by Rand Fishkin:

Advertising Data Product SparkToro

New in SparkToro: Enhanced Text and Hashtag Insights

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Just last week we released the new Press tab, but we’re at it again with another upgrade for your SparkToro account—albeit a more modest one. Today, we’re excited to announced an upgraded Audience Insights tab with more data available, and new segmentation of text insights. All the details and a few examples of how you might apply this data are…
Product Psychology Startups

SaaS Churn and Short-Term Customers: The Contrarian View

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Ever wonder why so many business software companies make it so darn difficult to start using their products? Or why subscription-focused tools are so obsessed with making it hard to quit vs. making it easy to sign up? Why don’t these SaaS (software-as-a-service, aka subscription) companies want customers who might only need their product every few months or even only…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro

NEW SparkToro Feature: Discover the Press/Media Sources That Reach Your Audience

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’m excited to announce that today, SparkToro is launching a new tab, with new data, for all customers: free and paid. When you perform an audience intelligence search, you’ll see the new “Press” tab on the left sidebar, displaying media sources followed + engaged-with by the searched-for audience. Sometimes, these publications will have overlap with the “websites” or “social” tabs,…
Marketing Predictions

Inferred Links Will Replace the Link Graph

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
For 25 years, links have been core to how Google ranks web pages. But, today, I think most marketers dramatically overestimate their importance. There’s good evidence that over the long run, links won’t be all that crucial to Google’s rankings, and will be replaced by lexical references that connect topics and keywords to a brand, website, or page—what I’ll call…
Advertising Marketing

Something is Rotten in Online Advertising

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
What the #$%* is going on with the digital advertising ecosystem? Where to even begin… Should we start with the upcoming loss of third-party cookies? The bizarre Google & Facebook duopoly teamup against anti-trust action? The rise of online ads as a money laundering & terrorist-funding tactic? Or maybe we should talk about brands’ ever-shrinking ability to attribute ad clicks.…
Data Product SparkToro

The Three Biggest Problems Folks Have When Searching SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Tens of thousands of marketers, researchers, product managers, and more are using SparkToro to learn more about their audiences. That’s inspiring. I love it. And also… Some of y’all are getting stuck. It’s not your fault! SparkToro’s a new tool, with a new search paradigm, and new kinds of audience data. So, it’s up to us to help out. In…
Events Personal

The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide on the Web

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
What’s in this guide that makes it so good? 37 small, privately-owned, high-quality businesses you’ll actually want to support, 75+ delicious food and beverage gifts that your friends and family will love to receive, and 0 slideshows, 0 ads, 0 affiliate links, and $0 dollars biasing the editorial recommendations. In short: everything you’d want in a food+beverage gift guide, nothing…
Marketing Product Psychology

Social Networks “Optimize for Engagement.” What Does That Mean for Marketers?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’m a firm believer that incentives and systems govern behavior at scale. If you want to understand why companies make the decisions they do, look at how their executives and boards are rewarded. If you’re trying to grok an unfamiliar sport, see how points are scored and wins are tabulated. Follow the incentives, and you’ll understand the system. If you’re…

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