Rand Fishkin’s Post

It is interesting that anyone thinking about audience intelligence are not fundamentally rooted in different search engine systems. I would think of Sparktoro more along the line of overall journey intelligence whether it connect via SEO, hashtags, clickstream data, or chatter at the latest conference. The feedback just goes to show how much segmentation there is between multiple lines of professionals trying to interpret the same core types of data (and the SEO leak had numerous 'influencer' signals in the docs along with possible identity level scoring concepts.) +++ Laughingly I would say the 'off brand' item for Sparktoro is the collection of 5e books in your background. 😉

I don’t think there’s that much of a contradiction if you think of search as another marketing channel. SparkToro is an audience research tool, and it gives insights from multiple channels - website content, social media, Reddit, podcasts, YouTube, search, and various apps. SEO shouldn’t get a focus over everything else, but it doesn’t need to get ignored either. SparkToro is a full funnel marketing data tool, not a siloed one.

Surely an interesting message. I do not think your recent contents are out of “your current target”, also because I personally believe that SEOs more and more will start using Sparktoro (and Digital PRs, who are SEOs by heart, would be silly not adopting it). Maybe, what was missing, and this is the constructive tidbits I would take from that message, is that a “plain English explanation of what the Google leak means for non-SEO creators and website owners” could be something I’d create. Sure, the final part of your first post was very understandable for everybody, but the first part of it may have caused the negative reaction that message is an example of. I personally loved it.

Dude I love how you leaned into this. This is what makes you a freaking real one. You made a video about it too. Respect.

For what it's worth, even the free SparkToro tools have helped me a whole heck of a lot Rand. Really looking forward to the webinar!

Appreciate your transparency and commitment to understanding customer feedback. Turning criticism into a learning opportunity is key to building trust and improving continuously. Well done!

Appreciate your transparency and commitment to understanding customer feedback. Turning criticism into a learning opportunity is key to building trust and improving continuously. Well done!

lol You're literally the guy who made SEO cool - your in-depth knowledge on the evolution of Google as a platform is second to none. To this day I still look to learn from you.

Well it can't be any more outside of SparkToro's core mission than all those gift guides you've got lying around on the site... Comedy aside, I really appreciated the webinar since a lot of people I know and love are SEOs (S.E.O.s?) who couldn't attend. This email is great though since you mentioned in the call that Google doesn't even seem to know what SparkToro is. How do we get Google to recognize you guys are some kind of all-encompassing marketing & audience mining tool? Please do keep up with these webinars, they're much appreciated. There are a ton of "webinars" that are really just a sales pitch without too much actionable information in them, so you're doing a good thing for the community with your office hours. Keep it up!

Rand, I listened to you and Mike the other day, and it was super helpful. I'm just chiming in on this video because a client asked me a very similar question recently. One of the most significant parts of the leaks is the revelation that SEO is not what it once was—with vector databases and AI, SEO is no longer just for the "SEO Experts" but for anyone creating content online. Google's algorithms using embeddings for sites and authors are an example of this—they look at the reputation of authors and websites holistically, including what (and how) other authors and websites talk about you. Thanks for the webinar—I found it extremely helpful. PS: Speaking of off-topic, the example of the Food and Drink gift guide is more off-topic than SEO :)