Rand Fishkin On The New Search Reality: AI, Zero-Click & The Pinball User Journey

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Hello, welcome back to Search Sha. This

is another chat with Sean episode and

yeah, it's going to be a great one. I'm

really looking forward to this. Someone

who I've mentioned countless times on

the channel. We always seem to be

through his videos and now we got the

the person himself here. But, uh, yeah,

I'll do the quick intros and then we're

getting some topics that we've kind of

discussed beforehand. So yeah, obviously

you're watching this, you probably know

already, but Ran Fishiskin is the

co-founder and CEO of Spark Turo and

Alert Mouse. Um, two tools reshaping how

marketeteers understand audiences,

attention, and brand visibility. So

yeah, so thrilled to have you here, Ran.

Thanks for joining me today.

>> My pleasure, Sean. Yeah, good to be

here.

I should say tonight actually because

it's uh it's it's tonight in London. But

no, it's awesome. So I guess the best

way to start this is to like can you

give me a quick overview of kind of what

Spark Toro and Alert Mouse is and kind

of what problems they solve, I guess.

>> Sure. Yeah. Yes. Uh so Spark Toro is an

audience research tool. It's been around

for gosh about five years now. And

basically, if you want to know what

podcasts chemical engineers in the UK

listen to or what websites are popular

with architects in California or um what

people who visit Wistia's website

also do on Reddit, Spark Toro can tell

you all those things. It's behaviors and

demographics of any describable group of

people on the internet. And that data

comes from uh clickstream sources. So uh

we use we use datos which is our

clickstream provider. Basically about 10

million devices. They see every URL

that's visited. And then we look at like

people who do X also do Y. Uh and then

demographics from LinkedIn and we do

some stuff with Google. We do some stuff

with um uh some AI tools for you know

when people enter those descriptions.

All all that mashup of data equals you

understanding your audience better.

Alert mouse probably even even simpler.

Spark Toro is a very simple

straightforward tool but alert mouse is

even more straightforward. It's Google

alerts if Google alerts were good and

worked.

Yeah, which um I think we definitely

need. It's a great concept as you say,

but yeah, the functionality isn't quite

there. Um yeah, and Spark Tour is

fantastic. feel like I I've delved into

a little bit. Um, and yeah, especially

in today's day and age, it's definitely

needed and like the videos do with the

data that you collect is so great and

that's why we always feature them on

here as well cuz yeah, you do a great

job of going through it. Speaking of

which, you know, you've recently

compared the modern user journey to a

pinball machine, which I think a lot of

us can didn't get that, but how should

marketing teams rethink their strategies

around this model? Like how do you

combat against that?

>> Yeah, I mean, I think the the problem is

the the old mental model especially of

measurement and investment was based on

the idea of clean funnel style journeys,

right? that at the top of the funnel,

there's a particular set of channels and

there's a particular way that you should

communicate about your brand, right? So,

it's essentially at the top of the

funnel, you're supposed to attract

attention. It's big picture. It's brand

marketing. Um, it tends to be on wider

channels. you know, often like uh a lot

of people think about social as being a

top offunnel channel or PR as being a

top offunnel channel, brand advertising

of course and then like in the middle of

the funnel, you know, you have your

getting people whose attention you got

to understand more things about your

brand so that like your website has a

particular message on it and your

content sort of whatever sells what you

do and then the bottom of the funnel

it's conversion rate optimization. like

you're trying to push people through the

conversion process.

That model worked pretty well from like

I don't know maybe the late 90s into 201

17 181 19 somewhere around there. But in

those in those mid mid2010 years like

from 2015 to 2020 user behavior changed

like it it no longer had that clean I

discover stuff on these channels then I

mostly go to Google and search for

things and then I get to the website and

I buy on the website and that um that

model has completely changed. People

search everywhere they do discovery

everywhere. Uh discovery happens in

Google's AI overviews. Discovery happens

in well Google discover right it happens

in in news. It happens in publications.

It happens on podcasts. It happens on

subreddits. It happens on YouTube. It

happens in social. And so do all three

of the former, you know, funnel stages.

They all happen in all the places.

Hence, it feels like a pinball. If

you've ever bought something like John,

I don't know. uh what you might be into,

but like if you ever buy something on

the internet and you're like researching

it like, "Oh, whatever. I'm going to a

wedding. I should buy a suit,

you know, and your research process is

is no longer what it was 10 years ago."

Like, it's just not that that clean.

Okay. Um yeah, I think I'll browse

around, you know, some uh you know,

retail options. I'll look at Google

images. I'll go to Pinterest. Maybe I'll

go to Instagram. And then I'll go and

search out all the brand retailers and

I'll visit all their websites and I'll

choose one and I'll buy that that you

know you and I both know that that

journey is like I go to YouTube, I go to

Reddit, I ask my friends, I pop into my

WhatsApp group, I go to my Slack

channels, I jump over to Instagram, then

I you know what the thing that finally

convinced me in the in the CRO uh in the

conversion rate optimization process

might have been literally a Substack,

you know, like it's just wild. is

totally different than it was years ago.

And so this this mental model that

marketers have of

uh cleanly segmenting and not siloing um

and and siloing operations. It it

doesn't work so well anymore.

>> Yeah, I think you're right. And yeah,

even mine journeys like majority of them

did not start with Google even though

obviously I work in the sector. It

starts with YouTube or chatb now or

whatever. So right.

>> Yeah, it's Yeah, it's it's proof, you

know, and also I do think obviously

you'll probably work with a lot more

people and meeting like clients and

stuff, but especially large

organizations, they've got like this

legacy budget and legacy platforms that

they've always gone through like

Facebook or something, but maybe their

audience isn't really there anymore or

they're not always there as much as what

they used to be. So they're still

pumping in a lot of budget into like

Facebook, let's say. Like do you see

that a lot that the people just haven't

moved on trying to find actually where

like you say their users are and maybe

on podcast on Tik Tok or or whatever,

you know?

>> Yeah. Yeah. So Sean, I don't know how

long you've been in like marketing world

or or SEO world, but you know, my memory

was like back in when I first got into

SEO, which was like 2001 23,

the the big challenge was convincing

brands and business owners and products

that they should a get on the internet,

like the internet would be a real thing,

and and b convincing them that people

were using search engines. You know, at

the time it was like MSN search and you

know, Dogpile and Likos and Alta Vista

and and Hotbot and Google. Obviously,

Google sort of won the won the search

engine wars and like became the dominant

player. But just convincing people to do

that, like, hey, you should invest in

this. And I it kind of feels the same

right now. It feels like we're having to

have the conversation where it's like,

hey, I know you just for the last, you

know, 15 years, you've been throwing

your budget at Google and Facebook and

that's been working for you. But I

they are great at one thing, taking

credit for sales that would have

happened anyway. That's what that's what

Facebook does, right? If if you look at

how the Facebook pixel functions, it

doesn't even care if the user scrolled

to a place on the page where the

Facebook, you know, whatever ad or or

unit was. It will count that as a uh

view true conversion and and it will

take credit. Facebook's platform will

take credit for that. Google is the same

way, right? So like if you

search for a company's brand, right?

You're like, "Oh, you know what? I've

decided I'm going to get a, you know,

Paul Smith suit for this wedding. And

you Google Paul Smith Suits.

The top link is almost certainly going

to be a sponsored ad, right? Because

Paul Smith is buying their own brand

name at the top of Google because Google

basically operates like the New Jersey

Mafia. And there, you know, like it's

Tony Soprano man. Right. It's

like, oh, that's a nice brand you got

there. It would be a shame if one of

your competitors was to rank above you.

I'm afraid we're going to have to sell

them that spot. You know, like that is

literally what's happening in Google.

And so Paul Smith has to buy their own

sponsored listing for that. And then

when the CFO and the CEO get together

and they look at, you know, the

attribution of like, oh, what sent us

customers?

Google Google looks like they sent you

customers. You know what? Google

deserves zero credit, zero zero

attribution for any branded search.

They didn't send that to you. That

person already knew that they were going

to buy your product. Why the hell are

you giving Google credit for that? It's

insane.

It is. And it's so Yeah. So spot on like

what you're saying. It's crazy like when

so many seuite sort of, you know, kind

of come back of it and they're giving

praise to like especially like places

like Facebook and stuff. Obviously, one

thing you do really well and what I

enjoy your videos about is watching your

take on the latest trends and patterns

in the market share and what's going on

in the market. Obviously, you got a lot

of data like you say you play with, but

like what kind of looking at the latest

stuff that you've seen, what are you

seeing in terms of, you know,

traditional search and AI and and uh you

know, that sort of thing. Is there any

sort of things that stand out to you?

>> Yeah. Um Sean, I'm sure you've seen this

all over your like LinkedIn or threads

or blue sky or Twitter if you're still

there feeds, right? Which is which is

this like massive new, you know, subset

of people who I think Lily Ray calls

them the GEO grifters, right? Um, and

you know, she's correctly identified, I

think, that that because there's this

new trend of

AI popularity, especially in in the

business world, right,

that a ton of people are like, "Hey, we

can, you know, we can shake these people

down for some money if we claim that we

can, you know, correctly show them where

their brand is in in Chachi BT and

Gemini and Perplexity and Claude and all

that kind of stuff." and and if we tell

them like oh hey we'll get you so that

we'll get it so that when you enter this

prompt or these prompts like your brand

comes up in the list. So we we have done

a bunch of work with datos and published

a bunch of research which I think you

pro probably referencing some of those

videos that I've published and some of

the reports that are on the spark blog

where essentially we look at uh the rise

of AI tool usage the number of AI

prompts that are

similar in intent to a search. Right? So

one thing that you could do if you

wanted to be very misleading is you

could say oh chatbt receives you know

whatever it is. So

uh a chatbt says they get sorry a

billion messages per day. Messages per

day. So you could, if you wanted to be

very misleading, directly compare that

to Google's

14 billion searches a day and then say,

"Oh, you know, chatbt is catching up to

Google." And that's what a lot of

prognosticators do. That's what a ton of

media does.

But that is absolutely a lie with

statistics because that 1 billion number

includes every message that's sent not

only by users, but by APIs. So if you're

IBM and you're sending, you know, 10

million uh API calls to chatbt every

day,

they include that in their 1 billion

messages. That's pretty damn misleading

in my opinion, right? Like that is

sketchy as hell. Also very sketchy is to

say every chat GPT uh prompt is

equivalent to a Google search.

Also not true at all. about 30% of uh

prompt sessions like a session where you

have you know multiple prompts is

equivalent to a search uh so 30% of chat

GBT's usage has some search-like

behavior people are asking questions

like I have a wedding to go to you know

in two weeks where can I get a men's

suit that will be appropriate for like

that kind of a thing um give me a list

and uh and many 70% of the chatbt

prompts are things like, "Hey, make me a

picture of um you know, a McDonald's

restaurant inside a dungeon."

Like what? What? Why? Who knows? You

know, like people do tons of stuff like

that. Or like, "Hey, uh will you help me

do my history homework?"

Right? And that that is not or or hey,

will you debug this Python code? Those

things are not things you could use

Google for. they're not equivalent. That

is 70% of all chat GBT use. So what what

we did, we we sort of broke this down.

We're like, okay, a billion messages per

day. There's an average of eight

messages per per prompt session. 30% of

prompts have searchike intent. So that

is 37 and a half million searches per

day that happen on chat GBT versus

Google which has 14 billion searches per

day. And so then then you can compare,

right? You can see like if you make a

pie chart, it's like a teeny tiny slice

that you can barely see that's like two

pixels wide, right? And unfortunately,

like people just don't don't get this.

I'm not saying don't don't take this the

wrong way like John or anyone listening.

I'm not saying you shouldn't care about

AI at all. I'm not saying that like it's

not important for your brand to get

mentioned in there or that that doing

you know AI

uh tool optimization or AI SEO or

whatever people are calling it go for it

like do it just do it with the same

level of importance that you place on

Bing right which which also has like you

know a few% market share just like be

appropriate with it

Don't go don't go crazy and think that

you know Chachi PT is is surpassing. We

do also um do a lot of stuff about like

visitation. So we we will show for

example like if you go to Spark Toro and

you search for an audience you can see

how many people in that audience visit

ChachiBT or Perplexity or Gemini or

whatever versus how many of those people

are using Google search.

That doesn't tell you how many searches

they're performing, but it gives you

some sense. So like sometimes chatbt is

much more popular with a particular

audience than with another one. And that

might be important to know like maybe in

a particular space chatbt is huge. You

don't really care. I think this is one

of the big frustrations that I have

about all sorts of market research data

that's just like generically published

on is like you see these reports come

out and you're like, "Oh, cool. Yeah,

that's interesting. What about for my

business? Like for my specific audience,

what's happening versus what's happening

overall? Right? If you see, I don't

know, Pinterest usage is up 14%. And

you're a B2B aerospace defense

contractor,

are you like, damn, we need to put some

missiles on Pinterest. You like, no,

Dave.

>> Yeah, I get what you mean. Totally.

Right. And and even cuz they're

interesting like you should really you

know look at them and and find them

interesting of course but you should

always be analyzing and doing your own

test on your own website cuz even from

like you know if you have a large

website even section by section behave

so differently. Pages perform

differently and people finding them and

discovering them differently. you know,

it's so so many nuances across the

entire, you know, people kind of get

carried away and then take the ball and

run with it. It's uh it's a dangerous

game. And then and then like you're

saying with chat GT obviously or with

any AI and a large language model

yeah it's a very small like obviously

there's been like some studies coming

out the overlap as you say between

people using captivity or other models

and Google seems to be extremely high

that people are still using both anyway.

Um but some people are arguing some

people in the industry that you know

okay it is a very small slice but

actually the intent is so high that

conversions are going to be much higher

so you should still focus on it and like

Lily Ray says and other people saying

well a lot of it is just normal SEO

stuff anyway so you know is there

anything more you should be doing what

do you say to those kind of people

>> I would say maybe I I disagree a little

bit with the

AI is uh optimizing for AI tools is just

the same as doing good SEO for Google.

There are plenty of unique aspects to

how those systems work, right? Like

Google in in Google's ranking algorithm

which we we now understand very clearly

thanks to the Department of Justice case

and like all the you know engineers that

they subpoenaed and documents and stuff.

So that that algorithm is very reliant

on click patterns inside of Google,

right? So like you know if you search

for whatever Paul Smith suits, but then

you end up clicking on, I don't know,

Ted Baker's website, right? Ted Baker

will start to rank higher in the Paul

Smith suit results,

which is fine. Like that's that's how

Google works. And Chachbt,

a they don't know it, and b they don't

they don't count that, right? So, like

trying to in improve your click-through

rate in Google is not going to help you

at all with chat GBT. Similarly, you

know, you could see um who was it? I

want to say AHF's like published a

a really good study on this. I've been

meaning to do a video about it as well,

but they had this study where they were

like, "Hey, how many of ChachiBT's uh

recommendations, you know, if you if you

ask it over and over for for different

recommendations, how many how many of

those brand recommendations are just

coming from essentially spammy top x

lists that people publish on lowquality

article websites and on their own

websites, and they were like, "Oh, yeah,

that's like 30 40% of the

recommendations. Like, you can you can

spam the hell out of chatbt right now

and it totally works." that doesn't help

you in Google at all, but it it's good

for AI, right? And I I don't know. I

don't know how you feel about this,

Sean, but in my opinion,

>> yeah,

>> sorry, go.

>> Oh, I was just going to say I I think

poisoning AI

answers is what my people would call a

mitzvah. Like, I don't I don't think

that's a bad thing. I don't I don't see

the ethical dilemma. I remember like

years ago, you know, people were like,

"Oh, spamming Google is is ethically

bad.

Well, I don't think anybody feels that

way anymore. They're all like, "You know

what? They're a big evil corporation.

Let's let's spam them whenever we can."

>> Yeah, I get I get that vibe. Uh yeah, I

think I saw that Ryan Law, I think from

Hreite, he it was something like 20 odd%

I could got that wrong, but a percentage

of pages that were like not getting any

organic traffic at all, but they were

being pulled in regularly by chat. So,

Oh, yeah.

>> Yeah, that was interesting. If you want

to be on, you know, the list of things

that JCBT or Perplexity or Claude or

Gemini, whatever, recommend, Gemini is

tougher because they have Google's sort

of intelligence behind them. But if you

want to be in the rest of them,

honestly, you can just publish a bunch

of articles saying you're the best, blah

blah blah blah blah, you're the top,

blah blah blah, you know, like easy

peasy lemon squeezy.

>> I don't know that. Yeah, if I were hired

to do that, that's probably that's

probably what I would do.

>> Yeah, you would. And I had Garrett

Susman on recently and he said the same

thing. I mean, I personally I think

obviously like we all want it, but in

the ideal world that wouldn't even be a

consideration

um to rank anything, but obviously does

seem to be a case at the moment. But I

think like what people like Ly Rya kind

of touched upon is like you know

traditional SEO sort of fundamentals are

still many of them are still the case of

getting yourself seen in these large

models. Obviously there are some

differences there and the way that they

rank things and stuff but if you do

things traditionally well you're still

going to have a really good chance of

being of showing up. There's a lot of

crossover. So

>> Sure. Yeah. I think there's there's lots

of crossover. I think it's it's really

similar to again going back to the early

days of SEO.

If you were trying to rank well in MSN

search and hotbot and loss, you would

do, you know, these list of 50 things

and 35 of those things would be the same

things you do for Google, but five or 10

of those things would be things that you

do differently. And you know, that's

just that's the way marketing is, right?

Digital marketing has always been like

this. the same things that you do for a

sorry a lot of the same things you do

for conversion rate optimization or PR

help you with SEO are those exactly the

same practices? No, of course not.

Yeah, exactly. And the thing is, like

you say, if if Google is such bringing

in such a huge part of your traffic, why

would you jeopardize

all that for going all in on AI search

for example? It just doesn't seem

sensical right now. In terms of like

some of the the data that you've been

looking at recently, what's kind of some

of the standout shifts that you've seen?

Like we've discussed a few, but is there

any sort of like

>> Las Vegas models that are kind of

creeping up doing better? I know a lot

saying Gemini is really doing well now

and they are

>> social media channels. Are there any

that stand out?

>> Yeah. Yeah. So the only

>> uh the only two AI tools that are

growing at least with in the US right

now, I think this is true in the EU UK.

Um we just published the Q3 report with

Datos. Uh so you can see the state it's

called the state of search report. You

can look it up and and see in there that

Gemini and ChatBT are the only two that

are still growing. So Deep Seek which

had like a very big Q1 has basically you

know dropped back down and plateaued. Um

Perplexity which had a huge 2023 and 24

has plateaued and is you know so small

on the chart that it's hard to see

anymore.

um Claude which I I know is popular with

a lot of folks for programmatic and

programming uses and and I have tried it

and I like it a lot of its analysis

features but it is not broadly popular

like Gemini and Chachi BT. Um, so look,

if I had to bet,

I would tell you I think Gemini sometime

in the next few years is going to pass

Chat GPT in terms of usage. Um, and I

have

moderate confidence, not enough to like

sell all my stocks, but I am I have

moderate confidence that

in the next, I don't know, 18 to 36

months, there will be a reckoning for AI

as a whole and we're going to see a

significant

stock market drop because, you know,

these product I I don't you know,

whatever. Chat GBT is not going to make

10 times as much as Microsoft in 5 years

and that's what they need to do in order

to you know support the funding that

they've received um to make their

investors happy. So I think a day of

reckoning is coming for them and I think

that's going to be rough on them and

then and will trickle down to consumers

or the other way around like consumer

usage will flatten

business usage will flatten people will

shift over to Gemini and then chatbt

will have a

you know a rough couple of board

meetings

and I don't know the more I read about

Sam Alman the more I'm like I look

forward to that. I think you know if

anyone deserves to come up it's uh it's

that guy. Um I think in the social media

sphere which which I'm glad you asked

about. So we we look a lot you know at a

lot of this data as well. It has been um

quite

quite slow to change over the last four

or five years like the sort of the rise

of the social platforms really

generally stopped at least in uh US and

UK EU

in uh 2021

approximately and the last four years

have been very chill. the the only real

growth that you see is a a mild to

moderate amount for Tik Tok, which I

think is not surprising. Um, and then a

substantive rise for uh threads and blue

sky. Granted, Blue Sky is so small

still. I think they're I think like 3%

maybe two or 3% of Americans are using

Blue Sky right now. Um, similar numbers

in the UK and EU. threads is getting

closer to like 15%.

Um, and probably and and Twitter of

course has been shrinking. So, Twitter,

you know, I think I think it's pretty

easy to to bet against that platform. It

it probably will not be a big player in

the next, you know, few years. Uh, the

revenue and user growth, um, with the

exception of a couple countries has been

in market decline. So that's those sort

of big trends.

>> Yeah. Interesting. And yeah, Sam Wman, I

couldn't agree more. We we we show a lot

of videos on here about him and his

contradictions from

his early days saying the world's going

to end if you do it. And now too, it's

the greatest thing. It's going to solve

everything. And uh and everything he's

doing in between in his personal life,

it does doesn't really add up. Um, and

now they're in code red apparently

because of the growth of Google and

Gemini. So they're they're panicking.

And like you say, there's only two ways

it can go. It can either totally

collapse because they haven't got the

model to support it or they put in huge

amounts of advertising and so then the

user experience is going to nose dive

because of people are going to get

annoyed with all that. So it's going to

be tricky. Um, and this is kind of you

can kind of pick up on that when they

start putting out press releases saying

that the if the AI bubble burst, then

the whole world is going to feel the

pinch because of the uh financial

systems are all going to break down and

they're all relying on AI like they're

trying to I don't know trying to make

the most out of it. So people panic and

they invest or whatever they want them

to do

in terms like the search engines. So

sorry the browsers that's what I'm

interested I don't know how far you look

into that but like obviously you know

they've brought out perplexity have got

you know their version the comet and

there's atlas from open AI is have are

you seen any have you got data on that

do you see any uptake on that or do you

think there's going to be any uptake on

that

>> yeah I've got the data right here um

so let's see atlas uh

does not have 0.5%

market share yet. So, but they are not

even visible in the data. Uh they're

nobody.

>> Yeah, they're

h they're just as good as the Spark Toro

browser.

Nobody know. Look, people are using

Atlas, but it it's it's such a fraction

of a fraction of a fraction. Um it's

smaller than Opera, right? So like just

keep that in mind. I think so. My sort

of conspiracy theory around the browser

from OpenAI is essentially that

lots of websites started blocking open

AAI from crawling them which because

they don't want to be included in the

model or they don't want to contribute

data for free, you know, whatever.

Reddit is like, hey, you have to pay us

if you want to, you know, get our um get

all of our content to use in your

training. And so OpenAI basically said,

"Hey, if we make a browser, then when

when we crawl these sites or like when

people visit these sites with this

browser, we can take their data and if

they try and block people block us,

we'll say, "Oh, you're blocking our

users. You're blocking real human

beings." And so it's this um Trojan

horse, right? Sort of scenario. Uh,

that's my guess about why they released

a browser and why they don't

particularly care if it has 0.1% market

share or 1% or 10%. Like they I'm sure

they'd be happy if more people use it,

but they're not going to push it because

it's already doing the thing they need

it to do, which is give them cover, air

cover for

stealing everybody's content.

I think it was Jerome from Enroll who's

come out saying he's seen that they

signed cash websites and and building

that sort of yeah that sort of database

of uh yeah um so it seems to be the case

in terms of like I reported on recently

it was Perplexi this time who uh bought

out Snapchat for like $400 million. I

mean, I'm not down with the kids that

I'm old now, but is that still like

prominent? Why would they have done

that, do you think? We kind of talked

about it on our show about why they

might have done that.

Yeah. I mean, my I think my best guess

is the same as yours, which is this is a

small demographic, relatively small

demographic, but it's a it's a young

one, and if they can encourage

uh young people to use it, then

hopefully they'll be able to create a

pattern and a trend over a long long

life and so, you know, have significant

lifetime value. This is why companies in

general tend to do so much youth focused

marketing is because they're trying to

attract and then addict young people to

their products and their buyer behaviors

because capturing people when they're

young is much easier than trying to

capture them when they're older. And

also capturing people when they're young

means that you have many years of

potential value to get from them.

>> Yeah, it makes sense, doesn't it? Um I

guess with all this change going on and

obviously people say you zero click

traffic now increasing massively people

being kept on Google's ecosystem a lot

more and the whole rest of it where do

you see the roles of websites actually

in future how much presence are they

going to have how many people actually

going to be using websites and yeah how

much effort people still put into them

do you think and their role in

conversions and visibility overall.

>> Uh I think they're still just as

important as before if if not more so

uh for

anything purchase behavior or usage

behavior

uh intent.

Where they're not as important is the

big trend of the last, you know, 1015

years, which is as a as the content

marketing platform and hub because that

content consumption is happening in

native formats on the major platforms

that already exist. It here's a simple

way to think about it. 10 years ago, you

know, we went to LinkedIn and Twitter

and Reddit and Facebook and people, you

know, brands posted their articles like

every blog post that they put out, they

like put in there almost like an RSS

feed and then you would click the ones

that you were interested in and you

would consume it on their site or you'd

sign up and you sign up for their

newsletter and maybe you'd go down the

rest of the funnel and you'd purchase.

Now, none of those sites send meaningful

traffic at all. You know, Facebook used

to refer,

I think it's a hundred times more

traffic than they do today in 2015. So

over over the course of 10 years,

they've reduced all the traffic that

they sent out by 99%. Right? And and

instead, what happens on Facebook is you

consume the content on Facebook, the

Facebook feed barely ever shows you

anything with the link because they

don't want you to leave Facebook. They

want you to stay on that platform. And

if you want to drag people off of

Facebook, you need to pay Facebook,

right? So the only links that you're

going to see, I'm saying only what, but

what I really mean is, you know, 90%

more uh is the the uh advertisements

that take you off to somebody else's

website.

Your website's still incredibly

important, right? That's where all the

AI tools and the social platforms and

people who are investigating you are

going to get answers about. Do you offer

free shipping from the UK? Um, how long

does it take the product take to reach

my house? Uh, do I have free returns on

it? What's the exchange policy? Where

are your stores located? You know, all

that information which people might go

to Chat GPT or Gemini or Perplexity or

whatever to get

still needs to be on your website,

right? Because that's that's where

they're sourcing it from. So, just as

important to offer all that stuff, but

it's not

if you are a content creator,

you can still put your stuff on your

website. I'm not telling you not to have

a blog. I'm not telling you not to like

have a newsletter, but I'm saying you

better create that stuff and then

distribute it in native format on all

these platforms. Take that blog post you

wrote, turn it into a single image and

a, you know, whatever list of bullet

points and make that your Facebook post

and your LinkedIn post and your Reddit

post and your Twitter post and your, you

know, YouTube video and your Instagram

update and, you know, like all that.

Don't

fool yourself into thinking that you can

just put the link out there and people

will click it.

>> Yeah. I mean, it's it's blatantly

obvious. Well, actually, I I think they

made it clear like on Instagram and like

say Facebook and and LinkedIn, like if

you add a link, you your content gets

devalued and you're you're not going to

get any visibility organically. So, but

on LinkedIn, I kind of put it in the

comments, but it still seems to know a

lot of the time like it doesn't get the

same visibility as just a photo or like

you say a video embedded into LinkedIn

or whatever. So it Yeah, that's like

it's definitely true. And do you think

like enough companies are still getting

their heads around like repurposing

properly onto the different channels?

Cuz I still see a lot probably doing the

old school way.

Yeah. I mean, we still do some old

school way, right? because that's how we

bring people to our site and convert

them to being subscribers to our blog.

Just because the reach is a tenth of

what it was 5 or 10 years ago doesn't

mean that we're not still getting value

from attracting the most qualified, most

interested prospects to that process.

But you know, you are trying to overcome

a huge hurdle and overcome all the

platform biases when you do this. So I

it can make sense for B2B companies that

have high lifetime value who are

targeting, you know, very specific

niches, that sort of thing. Everybody

else, the juice is not worth the

squeeze, right? And so, you know, my

general suggestion is if you're going to

have a content marketing

um effort and a significant content

investment,

you know, for your brand, you should do

it. You should design it in a zeroclick

platform native way. Like that should be

your first uh goal. You can no longer

treat it as a hey this is all going to

exist on our website and it'll provide

value that we can prove through our web

analytics that drives traffic from all

these other sources. That's not not

going to work. It doesn't work in Google

anymore the way it used to. You know,

you can you can go look at, you know, if

you get 10,000 people's um Google Search

Console and you look at impressions from

5 years ago versus clicks from 5 years

ago and impressions today and clicks

from today, you will see impressions for

almost everyone, at least everyone who's

had success, have gone significantly up.

I looked at Spark Turos, we have uh more

than doubled our impressions and our

clicks are down by uh 2/3.

So more people are seeing our brand.

More people are consuming our content,

but they are not consuming it on our

website. They're consuming it in Google

search result. That's the only place

they see us, right? They see us in the

AI overview and in the instant answers

and in the the, you know, snippets and

featured snippets, but they don't bother

to click, which is fine, right? My job

is not to drive clicks. I'm not an SEO

anymore. Like my job is to influence

people. I care about influencing people

in the places they pay attention with

the right message at the right time

which you know that's marketing like

even even SEO like yeah you know it used

to be like clicks were the big thing

obviously but for certain reasons but

that was still like a vanity metric

really at the end of the day is about

awareness and obviously you want to get

the conversions and stuff at the bottom

line as well. So um but yeah that's

still our job. we would just a different

form of doing that, you know, a

different place like a billboard or

whatever. Um,

>> you you were clearly ahead of me because

like when I was in SEO, you know, for

whatever 17 years, I thought my job was

clicks and traffic,

>> you know, and like I I really I really I

was hyperfocused on that. That's what I

thought my whole job was, which is

traffic. And and one of the really good

examples what you said is like video,

for example. So we used to get tons of

traffic from our videos on our website

and then suddenly they pulled the plug

and there was no video traffic. So if

you didn't repurpose it on the likes of

YouTube or Instagram or whatever

Facebook, you've like lost all that yeah

coverage, you know. So that that's one

really good example. Um, in terms of um

kind of phrase a couple hopefully that

in terms of like I've had some

discussions on the channel here recently

around AI mode. Do you think that's

going to become the default next year

would you say? And how do you think

agentic AIs are going to take off? Do

you see people like you know Google

Shopping have brought in these new sort

of aentic sort of features? Do you think

that's going to take off?

Um, to be honest, I don't like to

speculate on that stuff because I mostly

because who cares about Rand Fishkin's

opinion, right? Like, show me the data.

Um,

my Yeah, my take would be

don't

overinvest in anything that's a that's

clearly a short-term experiment. Invest

in things that you you know are

happening, right? So, what do we what do

we absolutely know for certain is

happening? zero click trends, more

features inside of shopping that give

more options to people. So like should

you provide all the data that a rich

shopping engine experience on Google

would be able to consume? Yes, because

it doesn't matter whether they end up

using a gentic AI for that or you know

no Gemini at all. Oh, it's all

filtration data that you know you have

to submit a feed. Who cares? Doesn't

matter. As long as you do the right

thing for that, you're in good. I would

not worry about AI mode replacing

the normal Google search.

If it happens, okay,

you know, what are you going to do

differently?

>> You would do something differently. I

Yeah, I I I don't think I would do

anything particularly differently. I'd

probably care a little bit more about

those AI ranking factors. You know what

I mean? Like that whatever. Maybe I'd

make a bunch of best audience research

tool, you know, shitty little lists all

over the

except Gemini is pretty good at not

picking those up compared to chat GPT.

So yeah, I

you know I here's what I do. I would do

a lot more PR,

right? Like PR is the way. What I want

is I want, you know, every publication,

big media, small media, podcast,

webinars, your webinar right here,

right? Like this podcast that we're

doing together. I want the words

audience research tool and Spark Toro to

appear next to each other in the

transcript so that when Chat GPT or

Gemini crawls it, they see, oh,

uh, Spark Toro equals audience research

tool.

>> Well, you just did it.

>> There you go. I probably work best. Can

you make sure that the word best is also

there and tops?

>> No, but you're right. I mean, you know,

and that's why Yeah, I've not really

changed too much. I say digital PR

working closely with the coms team. Um,

you know, there are some on page stuff

like the EAT stuff. I I, you know,

prioritized a bit more over the last few

years, making that a bit more clear. But

yeah, there's some things obviously that

you can do. But like you say, it's a

fair point and it, you know, if you're

in e-commerce, just like optimizing your

merchant feed has always been important.

So if you're if you're not doing that

now, then do that.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, where do you believe like what areas

do you believe marketing team should

prioritize right now and why are those

specifically? Obviously we talked about

some factors I guess that you would put

into that but you know from an overall

point of view in marketing

what where would you start and what

would you focus on?

>> Yeah I I think you got to figure out you

need to know your customer journey. So

like we talked about that pinball

machine at the start right there's the

bumpers and the flippers and the you

know spots that it it hits that someone

goes along in their journey. You need to

know what those are and be present in

those places with a message that

resonates.

If not, your competitors will be,

someone else will be. So, if you're

like, gosh, you know, when I go to the

Instagram discover page and I search for

uh men's suits, like we we don't show up

at all. We're nowhere in here. Like,

nothing is coming up. You know what?

That's dumb. Like, we we need to make

sure that our brand is at least visible

in this place because that is a prime

stop along the way. Even if we can't see

the journey, we know that that's

happening because we can see the data,

you know, from doing our audience

research and surveys and whatever. Like

be in the places your audience pays

attention. I would say this is the

biggest thing that most marketing teams

are just completely ignoring. They're

they're still just looking at their web

analytics. They see Google in there.

They see Facebook in there, you know,

whatever. They they see maybe Tik Tok if

they're doing advertising there. And so

they pay attention to like a few big

players, but they don't realize that all

of the

attention happens before they reach, you

know, a chat GPT or a Google.

>> Yeah. No, I agree. In terms of like big

picture in terms of like a digital

marketing, where do you think are like

going to be the major winners? um you

know could be platforms or companies or

and what do you think is going to give

them the edge? Obviously you probably

think Google are going to be quite a big

winner but yeah yeah yeah I um I think

people bet against Google at their peril

and that is not because I believe Google

is like the best company with the most

amazing engineers. No, I think they just

have a huge monopoly head start. I think

they they managed to sort of weasle

their way out of the antitrust case,

which they were clearly guilty, but they

they managed to basically do it with no

penalty. Um, and that monopoly power and

the ability to use their proprietary

data to enter and dominate other fields

is is nearly unstoppable in my view. The

other I think another big winner that

I'm surprised about because I think they

they've made a lot of missteps over the

years, but I think their user base has

made up for it is Reddit. I think Reddit

is going to keep rising as a platform. I

think the authenticity of real human

beings moderating each other and like

contributing sort of the forum focus of

the web. the more things get automated

and spicy autocomplete from AI, the more

people want

some some real person's opinion. And I

think I think that's going to be a big

winner. The other platforms I I suspect

threads is going to pass Twitter if they

haven't already in terms of usage. Yeah,

they might. They might have already or

they will in the next year and a half,

two years. Uh so that if you're on

Twitter, I would move to threads, right?

I wish I could tell you to move to Blue

Sky because I think that's a far more

ethical company and platform, but the

usage is just out there. Um,

>> yeah, those are sort of my big

predictions.

>> Yeah. And do you think forums are going

to have like a I mean, they've never

really gone away, but do you think

they're going to grow and grow in

importance again because of this AI slop

everywhere? people want that human

perspective or

>> yes, but I think it will almost

certainly be big platform, you know,

Reddit, right, for right now. May maybe

Facebook tries to get into the forum

game at some point, but um yeah, I don't

think I guess Facebook groups kind of

does that now, but I don't see

independent forums being able to survive

and thrive very well like they did in

the early years, right? Yeah. I mean I I

know like we have a forum at McMillan it

does quite well for people affected by

cancer.

>> Yeah. Small private communities right

like a private Slack group or what you

know private webs groups um self-hosted

stuff.

I'm not saying it can't work. I just

don't think it will it will not be

dominant over web behavior. Um yeah

unfortunately. Yeah. And I remember what

I was going to say earlier actually

about like people focusing on brand

management because

again I'm seeing a lot of brands

probably neglect their review page or

you know reviews on Google, reviews on

Trust Pile or people saying about them

on Reddit and so on. I think that's I

don't know you agree they're going to

have to you're going to have to put

someone there doing that now if you're

not already.

>> Yeah. Yeah. That rep management stuff is

hugely important. I think this is, you

know, we see a lot of people using alert

mouse for this, for example, right? They

put in their brand or their CEO's name,

their founder name, their own name if

they're a creator, their community's

name, and then they sort of see like,

oh, hey, this person is whatever saying

positive things about me. I should

feature that as a testimonial and like

amplify that on our social channels and,

you know, reach out to them and do

something nice. Oh, these people said

something negative. I should react. I

should respond or or potentially like I

should just be aware that there's a

there's a criticism and maybe fix it in

the product.

>> Uh Sean, I apologize. I have got to run.

I'm I'm 3 minutes late for a thing. But

it has been an absolute pleasure to join

you for this and yeah, I think we I

think we got some great stuff for folks

hopefully.

>> Yeah, I appreciate your time. I know

you're a busy man, so I'll let you go.

But yeah, I really appreciate it. Thank

you, R.

>> You bet. Take care of yourself.