Rand Fishkin | Founder &
CEO The Search World in 2018 What’s changed in how people search the web, and how search engines serve results (and what that means for marketing)

There’s a Lot of Misleading
Data Out There...

Google has 63% of US
Searches?

Facebook sent more traffic than
Google the last 3 years?

This seems
important…

But when the media amplifies
these stories, the headlines are immensely misleading 

How Do We Get Trustworthy
Data?

The data I trust most
comes from clickstream sources like Jumpshot: It’s biased by the panel of browsers, but not by the websites that install a given tracker

Breakdown of Searches on Major
Web Properties (May 2017)

Via Rand’s Blog Core Google
Search 61.6% Google Images 22.6% YouTube 4.3% Yahoo, 2.4% Amazon, 2.3% Bing, 2.2% Facebook, 1.4% Google Maps, 1.3% Pinterest, 0.5% Twitter 0.4% Breakdown of Searches on Major Web Properties (Feb 2018)

Good News for SEO

Google’s Growth 2017 trended ~10-15%
higher than 2016, not including voice or Apple devices

Via Rand’s Blog For every
paid ad click on Google, there are 20 clicks to an organic result.

Via Google Trends

Via Google Trends

Bad News for SEO

95% of clicks, 10% of
marketing spend 5% of clicks, 90% of marketing spend

Via GetResponse 2,510 marketers surveyed
by GetResponse in 2017 said SEO is only the 4th highest ROI channel they invest in

Via Geoffrey Weg

In Q3/4 2017, there were
(seasonally) fewer clicks available for SEO for perhaps the first time since Google’s launch Via Rand’s Blog

What are the Web’s True
Top Traffic Referrers?

Via Google.com Oct 2016 Facebook.com
Reddit.com YouTube.com Imgur.com Bing.com Wikipedia.org Gained/Lost 59.2% 6.5% 5.4% 4.5% 2.2% 2.2% 1.4% Yahoo.com 6.0% +3.4% -1.3% -2.0% +0.3% -1.2% +1.5% -0.1% -1.7% Amazon.com 1.3% +0.1% Top Traffic Referrers Feb 2018 57.8% 5.2% 3.4% 4.8% 1.0% 3.7% 1.3% 4.3% 1.4%

Via Google Facebook Yahoo Bing
Reddit GoogleAd Services Twitter YouTube Amazon Traffic Referrer % of Referrals*Rank Wikipedia Gmail Comcast Microsoft Online Imgur MS Office DoubleClick Ebay AdServer DuckDuckGo Deloton 57.8% 5.2% 4.3% 3.7% 3.4% 2.7% 1.9% 4.8% 1.4% 1.3% 1.2% 2.3% 1.2% 1.0% 0.9% 0.9% 0.8% 0.8% 0.7% 0.6% #1 #2 #4 #5 #6 #7 #9 #3 #10 #11 #12 #8 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 *Methodology: Forthisdata,Jumpshotcombinedthe largest30trafficreferral sourcestositeson theweb (mobile+desktop),andisshowing thepercentof thosetop30combined(thus, thelongtailof referralsisn’trepresented here) *Biases: JumpshotdoesnotcollectdataoniOS devices,somobileisbiasedtoAndroidand desktopisbiasedtoPC.DataisforFeb.1- 28,2018,USonly.

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017)

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017) Google distributes traffic pretty evenly

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017) Facebook is strongly biased to the top

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017) Reddit & YouTube even more so

Mobile CTR 2.0% on Paid
40.9% on Organic 57.1% Don’t Click

2.8% on Paid Desktop CTR
62.2% on Organic 35% Don’t Click

CTR on Google Mobile vs.
Desktop There may be more traffic opportunity from desktop STILL due to higher CTR Source

The move from SERP ranking
to SERP Features

SERP Features Are Near-Universal

SERP Features Massively Impact CTR

Many Features Remove SEO Opportunity

But, in 2018, There’s Also
More Feature Opportunity Than Ever Before You can do SEO to show up here And here

And here

Here And here Here too
Also here Yup!

16 Features Every SEO Should
Consider: Videounits SERP Feature Type How to Get In “PeopleAlsoAsk” FeaturedSnippet Maps Box KnowledgePanel Top Stories(News) Images Apps Create & optimizeonYouTube(or, rarely,Vimeo) Branding– get searchedfor with/afterthe query Phrasing& positionof short answerin content Claim GMB, get links,earn citations,be nearby Earn brand association,use structuredmarkup Get in GoogleNews,earn links,title w/ KWs Relevant images,alt attributes,& directembeds KWs in title/description, get popularin app stores

Books RelatedSearches Tweets SearchSuggest Sitelinks
SectionSitelinks In-DepthArticles Carousels/ListResults Write a book,use KWs in the title,have an ISBN Be searched+foundcommonlyw/ the KWs Verifiedaccounts help,use KWs in tweets As w/ relatedsearches,also geo-sensitive Get links& visitsto severalpop pgs; use markup Grow popularsubsectionsw/ popularsubpages Authorlongerpiecesthat receiveattention/links Be listedalongsidecommon sets on the web 16 Features Every SEO Should Consider: SERP Feature Type How to Get In

The move from results to
answers

Many Queries Get No Clicks
at All According to Moz’s clickstream data, <25% of searchers will click from a result like this.

This is so common that,
according to Jumpshot data, 49% of searches results in 0 clicks!

Why Sacrifice Ad $$ for
Answers? These are high CPC ads, with high ROI Why is Google hurting ad CTR w/ these answers?!

Google’s willing to lose a
lot of short-term revenue in exchange for addictive search behavior

Answers  More Searches The
addiction of search is powerful, i.e. “Google always knows just what I mean!”

Ads Can Be Answers Too…

In Organic, Featured Snippets Are
Google’s Primary “Be the Answer” Bet

These Snippets Also Power Voice
Search

Extracted, Card-Style Answers are Also
on the Rise

More on How to Become
the Answer: Via Dr. Pete (and more Dr. Pete)

The move from expressed to
implied intent.

Past: Query Terms Determined Results

Today: Google Knows What You
Want Better Than (& Before) You Do

Elements Google (Probably) Uses in
Predictive Intent: Location & Prior Behavior of Users in That Location DeviceAttributes: Type, O/S, Speed, InstalledApps, etc Search,App, & Browser History Gmail Behavior (& possibly all keyboard behavior) Temporal Elements & Time-Based Patterns

Different Devices/People; Different Results Seattle,
WA Northampton, MA

It’s Not Just Search Suggestions;
It’s Rankings Too

In San Diego,
comics rule:

I stumbled across an article
mentioning this resort in Japan early in my trip- planning research

By searching for & clicking
the site in Google, I biased the engine to show me more results from that domain in the future.

By the time I reached
evaluation stage, it was too late to convince me to stay anywhere else…

If Google Becomes a Suggestion
Engine, Marketers Will Be Left With Two Choices: Capture attention here Or compete, unaided, here

But Rand, How Do I
Rank My Site in Google?

8 Broad Areas of Google’s
Ranking Algorithm (for classic, ten-blue-links style results): Links Quality of Host Domain Query Satisfaction User Experience Personalization Technical & Crawl KeywordsContent

Does the text match what
Google’s ML systems calculate to be relevant, high-quality, & a match for the searcher’s intent? Content

Editorially-given, anchor-text-rich, followed links from
high quality sources still matter to Google (esp. in competitive results) Links

If Google sees high rates
of pogo-sticking or other signals that your page/site isn’t solving search queries, they’ll likely rank you lower Query Satisfaction Via WB Friday

Using the searcher’s keywords intelligently
on your page still matters for rankings (and for CTR in the results) Keywords Ring failed to rank until they changed their page title to include “video doorbell”

Domains accrue signals of quality
& value. Powerful domains may give the pages they host a boost in ranking ability. Quality of Host Domain Via OSE

Google wants to see sites
provide an easy-to- use, intuitive experience on every device, at every speed, without impediment. User Experience

Speed & accessibility to crawlers
still matters, and Google still doesn’t handle non-text, or non-HTML-link accessible pages well. Technical & Crawl

The geography, device, search history,
and timing of a searcher’s query can all change Google’s results significantly. Personalization

Rand Fishkin | Founder &
CEO Bit.ly/seoin2018