SparkToro Blog

Posts by Rand Fishkin:

Marketing Product SparkToro

How to Use Your First Ten SparkToro Searches

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Before SparkToro existed, the process of researching a brand’s audience was a frustrating one. I know, because I helped a lot of friends, especially those pursuing early stage ideas or launching new products. It took forever — usually months, sometimes 6+. The data was always self-reported (which meant it was often wrong). And scale was simply unobtainable. We could survey…
Marketing Product SparkToro Team

SparkToro’s Finally Here

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Almost two years ago, Casey Henry and I joined forces on SparkToro in the hopes of solving a thorny, expensive, long-standing problem in the market research world: How to discover the publications & people that influence any group of people online. Though we’re launching at a very scary time in the world, we’re excited to finally share that product with…
Marketing Psychology Startups

Read The Room.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
When folks ask me about how best to do marketing right now, my answer is consistently turning into the same three words: Read the room. Imagine you’ve walked into a religious space. This room is sacred to the people inside it. When you speak, whatever you say will be viewed through the context of where you are. That’s exactly what…
Marketing Psychology

Marketing Right Now Is #$%*ing Hard.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve talked to dozens of startup founders, small business owners, and web marketers of all kinds. Folks are scared, and rightfully so. Staring into the face of an uncertain period of quarantining followed by what most estimate will be the worst economic downturn of the last 50 years, and maybe 100, is sobering. The most…
Events Marketing Psychology Startups

Extraordinary Times Call For Extraordinary Measures

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
There can no longer be doubt: the majority of people in advanced economies are living through the most life-altering event of the last forty years. Natural disasters, wars, economic turmoil, political shifts, technological disruption — all of these pale in comparison to COVID-19’s breadth, speed, and the raw quantity of prolonged, global change. That’s in no way meant to minimize…
Startups

Google in 2020: From Everyone’s Search Engine to Everyone’s Competitor

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’ve written a lot this year about the shifts we’re seeing from Google — moving from search engine to answer to engine and now to a direct competitor for an enormous number of websites and businesses. Today, I’m sharing the latest numbers from our friends at Jumpshot on Google’s Q3 CTRs (using their recently updated estimation methodology), and providing some…
Data Marketing

Marketers Say Most of Google’s Public Statements Are False or Misleading

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
In July and August of 2019, 1,589 web marketers completed an online questionnaire as part of SparkToro’s Google Ranking Factors Survey. The survey aggregated marketers’ perceptions of the ranking elements used by Google’s search engine. But… it also asked a set of questions around the level of trust in Google’s public statements. Those results are shared for the first time…
Data Marketing

Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
We’ve passed a milestone in Google’s evolution from search engine to walled-garden. In June of 2019, for the first time, a majority of all browser-based searches on Google.com resulted in zero-clicks. Throughout this post, I’ll be using numbers from the clickstream data company, Jumpshot. They are, in my opinion, the best, most reliable source of information on what happens inside…

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