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If you’re not one of our 280,000 subscribers, you’re missing out on some great reading!
Here’s a quick summary of my personal favorites from the past month:
The best of March 2024
How 16 companies dominate the world’s Google search results
Author: Glen Allsopp
tl;dr
Glen’s research shows that just 16 companies representing 588 brands receive 3.5 billion (yes, billion!) clicks from Google every month.
My takeaway
Glen has mentioned some really useful ideas in this report, such as the fact that many of the brands that dominate search results are adding bios of mini-authors.
This idea makes so much sense in terms of both UX and EAT. I’ve already pitched it to the team and we’re going to implement it on our blog.
How Google is killing independent sites like ours
Authors: Gisele Navarro, Danny Aston
tl;dr
Major publications have gotten into the affiliate game, publishing “best of” lists about everything under the sun. And despite the fact that products are often not thoroughly tested, they dominate the Google rankings. The result, Gisele and Danny argue, is that real review sites suffer and Google is quickly losing content diversity.
My takeaway
I have a lot of sympathy for independent sites. Some of them do their best, but unfortunately they get lumped in with thousands of others who are more than happy to spam.
I know it’s hard to hear, but the truth is that Google benefits more from big sites in the SERPs than from diversity. That’s because the results from big brands are likely what users actually want. In general, people prefer to shop at Walmart or ALDI rather than a local store or farmer’s market.
That said, I agree with most people that Forbes (with its questionable contributor model) contributing to fraud and bad journalism) should not be so richly rewarded.
The discussion forums dominate 10,000 search results for product reviews
Author: Glen Allsopp
Tl;dr
Glen analyzed 10,000 keywords for ‘product reviews’ and found that:
- The SERP feature ‘Discussions and Forums’ was present in 7,702 of them (77%).
- Reddit was present in 97.5% of them.
- 51% of the top-ranked threads on Reddit currently have spam as the top comment.
My takeaway
After Google’s heavy promotion of Reddit in last year’s Core Update, unscrupulous SEOs and marketers have, to no one’s surprise, already started spamming Reddit. And as you may know, Reddit’s moderation is done by volunteers, and they obviously can’t keep up.
I’m not sure how this second-order effect completely escaped Google’s clever minds, but from the outside it seems that Google has capitulated to some extent.
I’m not one to make predictions and I have no idea what will happen next, but I agree with Glen: Google’s results are the worst I’ve ever seen. We can only hope that Google fixes itself.
Who drives traffic on the Internet and how much? New research from Datos & SparkToro
Author: Rand Viskin
tl;dr
63.41% of all US web traffic referrals from the top 170 sites are initiated on Google.com.
My takeaway
Despite all our complaints, Google is still the most important platform to generate traffic from. That’s why we all want Google to sort itself out and do well.
But it would also be a mistake to look at this post and think that Google is the only channel where you need to get traffic from. Like Rand’s later blog post clarifies: “be careful not to give attribution or credit to Google when other investments determined the true value.”
I think many affiliate marketers have learned this lesson well from the past core updates: relying on a single channel to generate all your traffic is not a good idea. You should use other platforms to build brand awareness, interest and demand.
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