The media hype may be overblown, but the data doesn’t lie: over 20% of Americans are now heavy users of AI Tools (employing them 10X or more each month),| SparkToro
It's time we pulled back the curtain on one of SparkToro’s newest superpowers: Conversational Queries (a.k.a. audience descriptions), powered by AI.| SparkToro
Every now and then a career “L” seeps its way into my subconscious, usually at about 11:05pm when I’m about to fall asleep. One of those recurring| SparkToro
It’s always, “How do we get mentioned by ChatGPT?!” and not, “How can we be worth mentioning by ChatGPT?” Fortunately, this blog post is your guide to| SparkToro
There’s a reason zero-click content has taken over your feed, your marketing strategy, and increasingly, your job description. It’s not just because it| SparkToro
Starting today, there are customizable graph visuals in almost every section of SparkToro's reports. Because why the heck should you have to be an Excel| SparkToro
Update: We hosted a SparkToro Office Hours webinar about audience personas. Sign up to watch the replay. I have a bone to pick with buyer personas, but| SparkToro
Boss: "We need marketing personas for each of our customer targets."You: "Got it. What problems are these personas meant to solve?"Boss: "You know, um...| SparkToro
There's nothing wrong with running a quick SparkToro audience search, scrolling around for 5 minutes, and coming away savvier and better-informed about a| SparkToro
How do you earn budget if attribution is dead and traffic is vanity metric? Lift-based experimentation. That's when, rather than try to assign a weight to| SparkToro
TL;DR - From May 13-15, 2022, SparkToro and Followerwonk conducted a rigorous, joint analysis of five datasets including a variety of active (i.e.| SparkToro
60% of marketers say their top goal for the next 12 months is "increasing traffic." And 59% say their primary KPI is... also traffic. To all those folks,| SparkToro
Most folks who follow me know I'm a bit of a late adopter and skeptic of AI. Yes, it can do some impressive things that takes humans a long, painful| SparkToro
Over the weekend, I went digging for evidence that AI can, will, or has replaced a large percent of jobs. It doesn't exist. Worse than that, actually,| SparkToro
It's a day ending in Y, which means my social feeds are filled with people attempting to rebrand the acronym "SEO." Look, I ain't here to rain on your| SparkToro
Look, I get it. The new world of a zero-click web, where search engines, AI tools, and social networks hoard traffic and send fewer and fewer visits out| SparkToro
Marketers love to talk about A/B testing. Heck, I’ve said it too. It sounds prudent. Responsible. “Test before you commit! Don’t waste resources!” But the| SparkToro
We all know what a target audience is. Or at least we think we do. We've written "target audience" in strategy documents and nodded along in meetings when| SparkToro
Those skilled in the art of BS detection can tell you that 99% of company mission, vision, and values statements are meaningless. For corporate ideals to| SparkToro
The Short Version Our new company, SparkToro, LLC has just completed a $1.3mm angel financing. And, because we think our structure might be right for many| SparkToro
17 years ago, I dropped out of college to work with my mom, Gillian, on the business that became Moz. For 7 years (from 2007-2014), I was that company's| SparkToro
In 2011, in one of my favorite hiring stories, a longtime SEOmoz community member joined our team. He'd been contributing to the blog for years,| SparkToro
If you've ever stared at a blank content calendar wondering what to create next, you're not alone. Even the most prolific writers* sometimes feel like| SparkToro
For years, two questions have dominated both marketers’ interest and the media’s coverage of Google Search: Are AI Tools taking market share away from| SparkToro
Over the last few years, I've been incredibly frustrated with inaccurate, unrepresentative data sources about how traffic flows on the web and where web| SparkToro
Last quarter, we published an extraordinary analysis of hundreds of millions of Google searches alongside our clickstream panel partners at Datos (A| SparkToro
Did you watch the television program Ted Lasso? You probably did; it has the ubiquity of the 1980s' The Golden Girls in an era of deeply fragmented| SparkToro
I can't recall a time over the past fifteen years where the next five years in the world of search engines and SEO seemed as clear and obvious as they do| SparkToro
“What the pandemic showed is we can take marketing down to zero and still have 95% of the same traffic as the year before. So we’re not going to forget| SparkToro
You've heard the marketing analytics spiel before. It goes something like: Marketing journeys are long, complicated, multi-channel paths. Tracking them is| SparkToro
We launched SparkToro four years ago with the firm belief that audience research — and the knowledge that the tech giants gather about us — should be| SparkToro
Every month, hundreds of thousands of people search on Google for "upcoming movies." And in the SEO and web marketing worlds, there are a lot of| SparkToro
I don’t mind the generative AI craze. While some folks rail about the AI-generated comments that dominate their LinkedIn feed, I say, thank you for the| SparkToro
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| SparkToro
Category: 5-Minute Whiteboards| SparkToro
3 months ago, a dear friend's agency closed for good. 2 months ago, another close friend had a round of layoffs at their firm. And in just the last two| SparkToro
Perhaps this was inevitable. In a system that encourages monopolies, and demands those monopolies increase growth rate and extract ever more revenue (sans| SparkToro
It's no surprise that marketers, founders, and business owners are starting to ask how their brands can be returned in the answers given by AI/LLM tools| SparkToro
Here’s a confession: I’ve never really understood the whole “SEO-driven content strategy” thing. I mean, yeah, I understood it on an intellectual level.| SparkToro
The good folks at Sonata Insights recently analyzed Datos' clickstream panel to uncover consumer search behavior insights in the "age of AI". If you're in| SparkToro
Update: We hosted a SparkToro Office Hours webinar about Zero-Click content on August 23. Sign up free to watch the replay. It could be a chicken or egg| SparkToro
"Most of our site's traffic comes from Google, so most of our digital marketing efforts and spending should be on Google, too." - An absolutely terrible| SparkToro
When did you first promote content on the Internet? Some of us have been doing it long enough to—GASP—remember when Facebook post CTRs were 10%. Yes,| SparkToro
Welcome to another edition of 5-Minute Whiteboards. And folks, we've got a doozy of a topic. Yes, I'm being intentionally provocative. But it's because| SparkToro
Great news—the last of our three, search-focused features in SparkToro V2 has finally launched. It's called Ranking Pages and you can now find it in the| SparkToro
Over the past decade, I’ve done several reports with multiple clickstream panels analyzing Google search behavior at scale. The last such analysis was in| SparkToro
As I promised last week, when we launched Search Modifiers in V2, SparkToro has a whole bunch of new product updates to release. The second of these| SparkToro
We've got a whole slew of new features coming to SparkToro V2, the first of which launches today. What is it: Search Modifiers is a new tab in the| SparkToro
Update: We are diving deep into the Google API leak and what it means for marketers in our next episode of SparkToro Office Hours on June 27. Join Michael| SparkToro
When site owners and marketers log into their analytics tools to determine how visitors discover and reach their properties, they expect accurate| SparkToro
It's an exciting, relieving, high-anticipation day for all of us at SparkToro. Today's launch—which we call "V2"—is the culmination of more than a year of| SparkToro
In the era of zero-click platforms, native content, and walled gardens, does anyone still send meaningful traffic to the open web? Is Google responsible| SparkToro
This is a very short post to say: If you're not investing in your own email marketing list, you're making a bad choice. Social media engagement rates have| SparkToro
In August of 2019, I published research from now-defunct clickstream data provider, Jumpshot, showing that 50.33% of all Google searches ended without a| SparkToro
Here it is, our fourth annual edition! The first three were just practice for this masterpiece of culinary and imbibable magnificence. Because this year,| SparkToro
When Google's search results look like this, content creators, web searchers, and Google all win. When they look like this (or this, or this, or this),| SparkToro
I’ve told this story only once before. Never in writing. Never on video. My voice was shaky and I barely stumbled through it. But with a few| SparkToro
A few weeks ago, Wil Reynolds and I were on a video call together. I think I joined in a couple minutes after him, and the discussion was already| SparkToro
Content marketing, social media, events, PR, and marketing through sources-of-influence have consistently produced remarkable results for the companies| SparkToro
Generative AI, and ChatGPT in particular have been catnip to the tech press, the mainstream media, and the conversations of professionals in nearly every| SparkToro
Anyone can make it. Most of it is at least OK. Some of it's pretty good. A few folks are already sharpening their skills at prompting AIs to generate| SparkToro
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| SparkToro
I've ranted endlessly about how marketing leaders refuse to invest in hard-to-measure marketing channels like PR, media, native social, events, many types| SparkToro
