#this post completely ignores the at least 5x projects i have going on in the pottery studio....

[sonicenvy]

a solid 80-90% of my coolest craft/art/writing/making ideas come to me at the most inconvenient of times:

late at night when i am trying to sleep

in the shower

at work while im helping someone out with a thing

while i am biking or driving

when i am on a train car or bus having to stand instead of sit

tonight's inconvenient idea was for a new, different embroidery hoop that wasn't the pattern i downloaded and printed onto my dissolvable stabilizer, stuck onto fabric and mounted into a hoop (and then bought the thread for) and started on.

This idea was to do some of the images from the book of kells. I am especially fond of the very famous folio 27v which is from the gospel of matthew and depicts the symbols of the four evangelists (matthew, mark, luke and john as the man, the wingèd lion, the wingèd calf and the eagle). The one that seemed to be the least technically difficult to stitch in my mind was the wingèd calf (luke) so I cut the image out of the page in photoshop, enlarged it and printed it out. Once printed out I made a (clumsy) tracing of it onto another paper, which I'll have to refine and ink later. For now, I'd call that proof of concept.

After inking, ill probably scan it back into the computer and make a vector of it and print that vector out on the water dissovlable stabilizer to attach to my fabric. I decided to go about this route because, frankly, I'm shite at tracing things digitally with my ancient wacom tablet (and my ipad is too old to do apple pencil + procreate which would probably be better. Plus, like, I have a light box, why not use it?

As a side note I cannot draw AT ALL, but I am passable at tracing because of embroidery and because I traced stuff all the time for assignments back in primary school that we were supposed to draw stuff for if I couldn't get away with doing layer collages cut out with my x-acto knife for the project instead. (yes i was a single digit age child with an x-acto knife. my dad had an a+ parenting moment when I was like, maybe 5 and taught me how to cut out things (mostly my paper dolls) with an x-acto knife. I didn't even know how to use scissors at the time lmaooooooo. because x-actoing shit out is soooo much better, as I result i still stink at scissor cutting things.)

anyways. in case you were wondering about what the little guy im planning to embroidery looks like.... boom!

he's just a little guy! medieval monks drew all kinds of fun and funky creatures and frankly, dear old irish/scottish medieval monks, im obsessed. y'all dont get me started on medieval art and illuminate manuscripts or ill be here for 100000 years. my bones will be telling you about medieval art.

the other embroidery projects that are totally still going to happen:

the sea shell pattern i downloaded. good thing i didn't have to pay for it....

a blue morpho or a paper kite butterfly.

some kind of stitch sampler

other fiber art projects:

that crocheted shawl i downloaded a pattern for a kajillion years ago

the giant blue crocheted scarf that I got about 60% of the way through making from that pound o' love yarn skein.

mending. so. much. mending.

[godzillamendoza]

Film School Week 1

I’ve always toyed with the idea of keeping a journal to splay out my thoughts and keep a record of the strange and often scary things that run through my head in times of stress. I’ve also heard that it could be a good way to relieve some of that stress, and as anyone that’s been in my position can attest, the first week of college is fucking stressful. 

Now, I’ve dreaded this for a long time. Not because the concept of higher education put me off, or because I secretly didn’t want to do it, or because I thought college was a waste of time. No, it’s because of the drive. I have a crippling fear of driving, which I may do another entry about later. In short, being behind a wheel makes me panic like a Spider-Man UE4 developer trapped in a room with a Marvel Executive and a lawyer. Something about driving gives me this feeling that the whole world is out to get me and every time someone goes around me because they think I’m not going fast enough or they honk at me for waiting too long to go when the light turns green all makes me want to climb out of my skin and leave this planet and go live on Mars in a hut with good wi-fi. (this isn’t stream of consciousness is it? Oh, I guess it is now.)

Anyway, the drive to school is 45 - 50 minutes long. A 10 minute drive to pick up my friend Josh from his apartment stresses me out, and as you an imagine, the drive to school is 4.5 - 5x worse than that. The first day of driving there alone came, my mother being busy with prior engagements at work and my father being lazy. I thought I’d use my GPS to get there, but google decided that instead of a straight path down the highway, I should get onto the highway, get off of it, get onto a different highway, and then eventually merge onto the one I was already on. This all being uncharted territory for me, I went along with it and added way too many extra steps to my commute. 

The first day on Monday was rather easy, being that it lasted 2 hours. Apparently the school had assigned me a schedule to go there on Mondays and Wednesdays every week, but then mysteriously altered it to Tuesdays and Thursdays without notifying me. The teacher in the first class spent the usual 2 hours rambling about safety procedures and reading from a syllabus. Though I figured something was wrong when he did the “what the fuck is everyone’s names” thing and said I didn’t appear on his class list. Class ended and I wandered to the front office to ask about it and discovered the mix up. 

This is the point where I considered something drastic and violent, because I had driven to the school one extra time than I needed to for the week and gas was expensive. I opted to make this day at least somewhat productive by making a short jaunt across campus and getting some financial aid paperwork to fill out at the main building of the school. This meant wading through the crowd of people all staring directly up at the sky with what looked like 3-D glasses from Sharkboy and Lava Girl. As much as I wanted to sit back and gawk with them at the cosmic ballet of a solar eclipse, I had things to get done. So I spent the majority of said eclipse in a waiting room as the student help desk thing ignored my request for a form that was in a basket two feet away from where the guy was fucking sitting I could just go back there and get it why do I have to wait this is fucking stupid I hate everything. Thankfully though I walked out with the form and got to see the eclipse at its peak with some of those 80s bully glasses they were handing out. 

Tuesday was boring. All we did was look through the syllabus AGAIN, but this time with a different teacher and a different set of students and it lasted the full day instead of one class. My rampant insomnia had kept me up until 3 AM the night before, which I consider impressive for myself seeing as how I saw the sunrise every day of summer. This led me to making some tweets to mock the situation and of course people immediately couldn’t tell when I was trying to be silly. I got a mixed bag of encouraging messages from fans that wanted me to succeed and several crazy people ranting about how I should get my money back and quit college because they had a bad experience with a completely different type of college in a different state. And as we all know, if someone has a bad experience or dislikes something, EVERYONE ELSE should disregard its existence forever under their advice. 

The highlight of Tuesday was a moment where I made a genuine connection with one of my teachers. He was a young guy, maybe in his early 20s, who had been editing since 2009 and graduated from the school, only to realize that he loved Post-Production enough to teach it between professional editing jobs. At one point he tried to demonstrate to a half asleep class that they should have a watchful eye for editing choices in other people’s projects to avoid their mistakes and emulate their strengths. Thus, he showed us the short film he had edited during his time in the class. It was some short that had premiered at our state’s film festival, chronicling the plight of an overworked steel-mill employee that began an unhealthy competition with him to receive a promotion and make his family proud. Then he murders his friend by pouring lava on him and making it look like a random industrial accident. The teacher began rolling through it and pointing out his own mistakes as an editor in the film. An act of humility that I found refreshing after going to high school and answering to a faculty of self absorbed assholes that became teachers to feel like they were important. He explained how he made continuity mistakes with a character placing his hand on his face in one shot, then in the next shot removing the opposite hand. Mistakes such as this drive people in the industry fucking crazy because they’re trained to look for it, but none of the students noticed the goof. Myself included. That was when he started briefly describing the scene with the lava and I derailed the whole flow of the class. 

I asked him more questions about how he did such an impressive visual effect and I genuinely feel like it made his day that I was so fascinated. He gave up on talking about the syllabus and instead talked with me about the process. Apparently they had gone out to the back of the school and placed a black felt mat behind a mannequin and then poured green paint on it. Then he rotoscoped the footage to show only the green paint, which he then digitally altered to have the texture and glow of molten steel. He then placed this footage over the actor in the scene, who simply just fell down on the set because real lava is expensive, and lined up the way it poured over the mannequin with the way it would have theoretically landed on the actor. Having seen a lot of visual effects tutorials or watching the behind the scenes videos for Dragon Ball Z abridged, I knew almost all of the terminology he had thrown my way and I kept up in the conversation rather nicely. I don’t know how the other students felt about it considering it was just them watching two guys geek out over special effects, but frankly I didn’t (and still don’t) give a shit. It was fun. This was followed by a drive home where the GPS told me to get onto the highway, then off of it, then under it, then over it, then onto it again. Suffice to say, driving was not fun that day and I got home with my hands shaking and my legs numb and my ass sore from sitting for 56 minutes. 

Thursday started with... well today is Thursday. But today started with me wanting to procrastinate getting out of bed, so against my better judgment I set my alarm clock forward an extra 20 minutes after it rang the first time. I laid in bed with my eyes closed and my heart pumping through the back of my spine at the thought of driving. I didn’t even sleep for that 20 minutes. I just waited. Thinking. Panicking. After that I took a shower for 30 minutes like an idiot. Starving African children could have eaten all that water I wasted. Then I got into the car, turned on the GPS and it said that the drive would last 55 minutes because traffic was so heavy on the highway. Class began in one hour. It offered an alternate route where I did the same bullshit gymnastics of getting off and on the highway 6 times, but I decided that I had the path memorized a certain way and I was going to stick to it. So I disregarded the antiquated GPS and just drove there from memory with about 8 minutes to spare before class started. I had a decent amount of sleep the night before and I was on time and the drive was easy. It seemed like things were off to a good start. Then things started becoming more clear. 

The teacher in my Production 1 class seemed different from other teachers in some way that I couldn’t quite place. But today in seeing him run through a Powerpoint on the basics of shot composition, the rule of thirds, shot types, etc. I figured out what was off. He wasn’t a teacher. He had no degree for it. He as just some guy who, much like everyone else teaching here, was a student with a passion for film who started passing his knowledge to a new generation. It didn’t feel like I was being talked down to, it felt like I was being talked to. It felt like he was just some nice guy, maybe even a friend, trying his damnedest to explain how this stuff works. And then I realized something funny on top of that. I already knew everything he was explaining because I had studied this stuff in my free time since I was 9 years old. I think the only new information I received that I hadn’t picked up from documentaries, books, or YouTube movie reviews, was the technical aspects of these fancy 4k cameras and special tripods they wheeled in from the back room. Sure I was as lost as everyone else when it came to the equipment, but the mechanics of shooting a scene, the methods of writing, the terminology of camera movements-- all of it I already knew.

The rest of the day after felt like something new. I felt like I was somewhere I gave a shit about what I was being told. After 8 years of drifting through school and feeling bored out of my mind (as well as some unhealthy levels contempt for my middle and high school’s respective staffs) I felt something bizarre. Caring. It was stuff I thought was cool. I was being taught stuff I’d probably be trying to figure out at home anyway if I wasn’t at the school. At long last, there was a sense of purpose. 

The Post-Production class was filled with editing terminology I wasn’t familiar with like the L-Cut, the J-Cut, Picture Lock and a few others. But I knew how to DO all of these things. I had already done them in my free time on YouTube projects. I finally had names for these processes I had self taught in my last 2 years of pursuing this strange potential career path. Things were starting to make sense and once again, the post production teacher and I ended up just talking about random technical stuff while the class probably rolled their eyes. He was barely older than me by a few years and he clearly shared a lot of my opinions and favored techniques for these things. I never expected that the first friend I’d make would be one of the teachers, especially given my history with authority. 

After that in my script analysis class I think I surprised the professor. He asked a question and I answered in a way that caused him to stutter and rethink his next words. I think I inadvertently stole his thunder a little by teaching the class a bit of film history that he wanted to tell. We were discussing types of characters and their levels of effectiveness with an audience. He asked “Why do you think the anti-hero become so popular in the 70s?” and I told him “because we had just gotten through Vietnam. In times of war, morals become more gray. Soldiers sometimes have to make tough decisions and do bad things for a good cause, Vietnam especially. When good and bad started to fade together in people’s minds it became easy for that to bleed into the writing at the time and you have more characters reflecting society’s feelings.”

He seemed impressed and annoyed at the same time as he said “that’s exactly right, yes.” But he continued on and I kept quiet the rest of the class. I’m sure he had characters in mind like Paul Kersey or Alex in Clockwork Orange. The entire time I rambled my psuedo-intellectual answer, all I had in mind was the Punisher. I was worried I’d end up sounding like an obnoxious know-it-all-teacher’s-pet asshole like Peter Parker in that new cartoon if I had kept going. It still felt nice to be right for once. Instead of being the bored/depressed kid in the back of the class praying for either death or the bell to ring, I was the smart one that was engaged and smiling. In fact, I started becoming self conscious and hyper-aware of it, but all day I think I was the only that just couldn’t stop... smiling. 

The drive home was better. I had finally figured out the most simple path and I just went for it. I disregarded the GPS and its dumbshit advice. Sure I spent 25 minutes of the trip in grid-lock dead stopped traffic, but I felt in control. I felt like I was confident in my ability to find my way home. I didn’t mind how slow it went because I knew that everyone on the road was in the same boat as me. And the slower you drive, the less likely you are to fly at the windshield if you clip a concrete divider. So I sat and talked to myself on the way home, cracking jokes back and forth with the voice in my head whom I’ve affectionately named “Co-Pilot” and I had an okay time. I got home and realized that everything was going to be okay. I kind of wanted to cry. I also kind of wanted to laugh. 

It felt like all these years of worrying about the inevitability of college and the dangerous commute just came off my shoulders. I felt like a boulder was lifted off my chest and I could breathe again. Now I know why I wanted so badly to go to this place for all these years. Its where I belong. And while it will certainly get a little stressful in the coming months to meet deadlines and collaborate with other creatives, its all the kind of stress I have spent the last years growing accustomed to by doing over the internet. Its not the stress of feeling stupid because I struggled so hard in my math class. Its just the same kind of hassle I’ve had to deal with already by virtue of being an artist. Its the kind of hassled I want to deal with because I know when the final product came out, it was all worth it. Feeling dumb in math class all these years to learn something arbitrary wasn’t worth it. This all feels right. Like I’m Jerry at a daycare for other Jerrys while Rick and Morty go off on adventures. This place was made for me. So yes, an art school is fucking worth my money because I’d rather feel what I’m feeling right now than be some 19 year old working in McDonald’s during the day and feeling hollow inside because I can’t express myself creatively. I hate that shit. 

This isn’t going to be easy, and there might be parts of it that suck. There might be parts of it that drive me to tears and anger, but it’s worth it. I finally found a place where I belong and that I love. Love isn’t easy. Its a lot of tiny problems to solve one by one to make a thing work in the long term. That’s okay. I’m prepared for that and there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. For just once. I’m feeling okay. And that feels kind of amazing.

[ormlacom]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for the next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable). I'm proud of Google for their work over the last few years to be generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works (subfolders vs subdomains being one of the continuing outliers where statements don't match reality). I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

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[eriginmarketing1-blog]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for the next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW - I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 - 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't - that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter - their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable). I'm proud of Google for their work over the last few years to be generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works (subfolders vs subdomains being one of the continuing outliers where statements don't match reality). I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn - where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[lawrenceseitz22]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2iffFJ6 via IFTTT

[swunlimitednj]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[digital-strategy]

http://ift.tt/2j6GJ1H

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable). I'm proud of Google for their work over the last few years to be generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works (subfolders vs subdomains being one of the continuing outliers where statements don't match reality). I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[whitelabelseoreseller]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/5118473

[neilmberry]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017 published first on http://elitelimobog.blogspot.com

[holmescorya]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[michaelsmotherman]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[qxcel1]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[mylifeisbeer]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[lawrenceseitz22]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2iiR9Kl via IFTTT

[crazeegeekchick]

8 Predictions for SEO in 2017

Posted by randfish

It's that time again, friends... That time where I grade my 2016 predictions to see whether I've got the clout and foresight to get another shot in 2017. This year is gonna be really close, as I was more aggressive last year than in prior ones, so let's see where we end up, and what I've got to say for te next 12 months.

As always, my predictions will be graded on the following scale:

Nailed It (+2) – When a prediction is right on the money and the primary criteria are fulfilled

Partially Accurate (+1) – Predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality

Not Completely Wrong (-1) – Those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense

Way Off (-2) – Guesses which didn't come close

If I'm at breakeven or above, you can have more trust for what I'll posit for the year ahead. If not... Doom! Well, OK, maybe not doom. But at least shame and embarrassment and what I hope are lots of hilarious tweets at my expense.

Grading Rand's 2016 Predictions

#1: Data will reveal Google organic results to have <70% CTR

+2 – I won big with this one, though it was one of my more conservative projects. According to our clickstream data gathered in the summer, approximately 40% of Google searches do not garner any clicks at all. Granted, some of those are probably Google autocompleting a query before the searcher has finished typing, but given the threshold of 70%, I've got plenty of room to spare.

#2: Mobile will barely cut in to desktop's usage and its growth rate in developed countries will slow

+1 – I'm giving myself a conservative point here because while Google's mobile growth has appeared to have slightly more of a plateauing impact (data via SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Google on desktop at ~51% in 2015, down to ~49% in 2016, with mobile the reverse) on desktop search volume in the US, I have been unable to find data on the growth of mobile/desktop in developing countries. If someone has a source to help me better refine this prediction, please leave it in the comments.

BTW — I'll grant that SimilarWeb's data on Google usage probably isn't perfect, but they have enough of a sample set that the shift in mix from desktop to mobile is likely statistically significant and thus, the trend's probably accurate.

#3: Twitter will figure out how to grow again

-1 – While Twitter did indeed grow monthly active users in 2016 (from 305mm to 317mm) compared to 2015 (when they only grew from 302–305mm), that was a very low bar. Growth is growth, but I don't think Twitter has truly "figured out" how to grow yet. Maybe they'll take a page from Hunter Walk or Anil Dash.

#4: Social content engines will become a force

-1 – This is a tough one... SimilarWeb shows Pocket down in the overall app rankings but up as a referring source, and up on the mobile & desktop web with more engaged users on the platform. Meanwhile, Nuzzel has grown ~30% on the web (again, according to SimilarWeb). Instapaper and Feedly seem to be doing well, but not exceptionally so. I think these apps are a force in the influencer world, but their success breaking into the mainstream seems, as yet, limited.

#5: Yext will IPO, prompting even more interest in the world of local listings

-2 – I'm shocked I missed this one. I think Yext is probably still a likely IPO candidate in the next 12 months, but credit to them for staying private longer and building up for what I'm guessing will be a strong public offering.

#6: The death of normal distributions will hit both publishing and search results hard

+2 – Tragically, we did indeed see more consolidation, the loss of more news sources and networks, and the continued domination of Google's search results by the few over the many. I showed off our clickstream data on this in my MozCon intro:

#7: The rise of adblocking is going to trigger attempts at legislation and incite more sites to restrict adblocking users

-1 – One out of two isn't bad, but since my primary prediction was around legislation, I'll stay conservative and deduct a point. We did certainly see more sites, particularly ad-driven sites, shifting to subscriptions and getting much more aggressive in their treatment of adblocking users. Mashable wrote about how it appears, from many reports, that adblocking itself seems to have leveled off in 2016, which few would have predicted. Maybe the savvy users who wanted to avoid ads have all done their bit and most of the rest of the web's users don't mind ads all that much? Or maybe just not enough to do anything about it.

#8: DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016

+2 – Barring perfect data for things like Amazon's Alexa/Echo (which is arguably a personal assistant, not a search engine) or for Google itself (which probably grew searches in the 10–15% range), it looks like this was spot on. Pretty impressive to see DuckDuckGo go from 8,606,321 searches per day on January 2nd, 2016 to 11,183,864 per day on January 2nd, 2017 — 30% year-over-year growth.

#9: Content marketing software for the non-enterprise will finally emerge

+1 – There's no clear, breakout market leader in content marketing software for SMBs (Canva might be on the brink). But, there are a lot of players and a few in strong positions. I'm not seeing any with tens of millions in pure SMB revenue, hence only one point, but this is a market space that even today is hotter than the SEO software space has ever been. There are at least 50 content marketing software companies with VC backing who have SMB offerings. In SEO, I don't think more than 5 companies have ever raised VC (versus private investment). And those 50 companies (plus the many private and unfunded ones) probably combine to serve a lot of customers, possibly more than the few SMB-focused SEO software companies ever have.

#10: The "big" trends for 2016: Wearables, VR, smart home, and Internet of Things will have almost no impact on the world of web marketing (yet)

-1 – I'm going to say that voice search applications that circumvent the web (and, thus, web marketing) are at least on the verge of having an impact on at least search, and possibly other channels soon too ("Alexa, read my Facebook feed to me so I don't have to see the ads.")

FINAL 2016 SCORE: +2

Whew! Just made it... Let's see what's on deck for the 12 months to come.

Rand's 8 Predictions for 2017

#1: Voice search will be more than 25% of all US Google searches within 12 months. Despite this, desktop volume will stay nearly flat and mobile (non-voice) will continue to grow.

I'm going out on a limb with this by predicting what most aren't — that voice search won't actually cannibalize desktop or typed mobile searches, but will instead just add on top of it. Today, between 20–25% of mobile queries are voice, but oddly, Google said in May 2016 the number was 20% whereas in September 2010, they'd said 25%. Either voice has been relatively flat, or the old number was incorrect.

KPCB's 2016 Trends report suggests the growth in voice search is higher, using implied Google Trends data (which, as those of us in SEO know, can be a dangerous, messy assumption). Clickstream data sampling and sources that track referrals (like SimilarWeb Pro) are likely better ways to measure the impact of cannibalization, and hopefully Google themselves (or third-party data sources with direct access) will report on the relative growth of voice to validate this.

In my opinion, voice search is the first true high-risk technology shift ever faced by the SEO world. If we see it cannibalize a substantive portion of search activity, we may find a pot that's been growing for 20 years is suddenly (possibly rapidly) shrinking. I'm still bullish on search growing for the next 2–3 years, but I'm watching the data carefully, as should we all.

#2: Google will remain the top referrer of website traffic by 5X+. Neither Facebook, nor any other source, will make a dent.

Here's SimilarWeb's breakdown for who sends traffic on the web:

I'd generally ignore "direct" as those include HTTPS->HTTP referrals that pass no referral string, every opening of every browser and browser tab, bookmarks, links from apps that don't carry referrals, etc. The data below is where I pay attention. There, Google is ~11X bigger than Facebook, which is ~1.5X YouTube.

My prediction is that Google continues to dominate, no matter the prognostications about Facebook or Snapchat or Amazon or anyone else making inroads to the overall traffic pie.

#3: The Marketing Technology space will not have much consolidation (fewer exits and acquisitions, by percentage, than 2015 or 2016), but there will be at least one major exit or IPO among the major SEO software providers.

Scott Brinker has been helpfully tracking the growth and changes to the marketing software landscape over the last decade, and there's been a metric ton of new entrants.

But, oddly enough, SEO has always remained a small player in the software world. The vast majority of the companies and tools in the list below are private, unfunded, and have annual revenues of <$1mm. A few larger players exist, but in every other marketing tech category, there's at least one player at 2–10X the size of our entire market combined.

Part of this is because very few entrepreneurs in the space have chosen to go the VC-backed, billions-or-bust route vs. pursue the relatively higher success and survival rates offered by small investors or bootstrapping. Part of it is because SEO as an industry is dependent on Google, which creates risk that many entrepreneurs and investors dislike. And part is because SEO has a bad reputation thanks to its shady past and a few spammy operators.

In 2017, I believe we'll see very little acquisition or IPO activity from martech players. But I think we will see one of the major SEO software players (most probably Yext, Searchmetrics, SEMRush, Brightedge, Conductor, STAT, Rio SEO, Sistrix, Yoast, or Moz itself) have a major exit. An IPO would make our field vastly more interesting to analysts and potentially investors and entrepreneurs, too. A large exit could start a wave of consolidation.

#4: Google will offer paid search ads in featured snippets, knowledge graph, and/or carousels.

In 2016, Google put shopping ads in image search, rolled out ads in local packs, and increased the number of top ads in AdWords to 4 (which can dominate many top-of-fold SERPs). Despite this, paid CTRs have been pretty flat.

Merkle/RKG data is awesomely transparent, but of course biased by the sites that use the agency and share their analytics/AdWords data. Directionally, it's usually solid, particularly on metrics like paid CTR, and I trust that it's rarely going to be way off. Their data also matches nicely to our own clickstream analyses, showing that 1.5%–2.5% of all search queries result in a click on a paid ad.

#5: Amazon search will have 4% or more of Google's web search volume by end of year.

You might have seen a report noting that Amazon is "beating" Google as the place consumers start their product searches. Unfortunately, that report used survey data, and we're all familiar with how poor web users are at estimating how they actually behave online.

Moz's clickstream data was more revealing here, showing that Amazon's probably ~2% the overall search volume of Google. You could certainly make the argument that perhaps only 4% of all Google searches are for products, and thus, Amazon is neck-and-neck. I suspect Google's still winning here, but my prediction is that Amazon will grow their search penetration and volume, in part thanks to Alexa/Echo, and in part because of their formidable Prime strategy, to be 4% or more of Google (doubling where they were this past summer).

#6: Twitter will remain independent, and remain the most valuable and popular network for publishers and influencers.

It's very in vogue to rag on Twitter — their share price has sunk. Their growth has been tepid. Trolls and abuse plague the platform and many of Twitter's leaders are culturally locked-in to a focus on "free speech" over improving the platform for abused and marginalized groups. Buzzfeed's report on these trends reveals a deep cultural rift that seems to be hurting the platform still.

Despite this, I'm bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform's open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. That, and no one else seems to be trying, possibly because Twitter hasn't shown the growth that closed networks like Facebook have.

My other prediction, that Twitter remains independent, is a thorny and unpopular one. Supposedly, Twitter's put itself up for sale, but the bidders have been less than excited (or perhaps the premium the company is seeking is simply too high). In 2017, I think we'll continue to see an independent Twitter, growing revenue and users slower than Wall Street wants, but maintaining their cultural and influencer status.

#7: The top 10 mobile apps will remain nearly static for the year ahead, with, at most, one new entrant and 4 or fewer position changes.

Mobile apps have been a bugbear for many big brands, marketers, and app creators. While apps have dominated time spent on mobile, apart from games, the money to be made and that precious time spent is almost all flowing to the top few apps.

Nielsen reported that Amazon broke into the top 10 this year, but apart from that, it's been fairly quiet in the rankings shakeups at the head of the app curve. What's scarier is that Google and Facebook own a full 8 of the top 10 apps, and those apps are responsible for more than 90% of all app activity.

This is a winner-take-all market, and one with a surprisingly short tail to its demand curve. I'm predicting almost no change in 2017. Apps will be dominated by these few. For SEOs, apps continue to provide some extra ranking opportunities, mostly in mobile on Android (and a little less on iOS), but the "App Takeover" of SERPs and mobile search never appeared. Hopefully, you didn't over-invest in the trend!

#8: 2017 will be the year Google admits publicly they use engagement data as an input to their ranking systems, not just for training/learning

2016 saw Google backtracking a bit on the issue of search/visit/click/pogostick data, most saliently via Paul Haahr's excellent slide deck, How Google Works: An Ranking Engineer's Perspective.

Since then, there have been fewer dismissals of this fact than in the past, but some Googlers have maintained in public talks and on Twitter that query and click data cannot influence rankings (which we've proven over and over is highly improbable).

I'm proud of Google for, over the last few years, being generally less misleading and more open on issues of how their search engine works. I'm hopeful this extends into the realm of engagement data because I believe it would have a real and positive impact on how many brands, publishers, and content creators of all kinds on the web think about what they create. The story in many circles is still "links + keywords," and the nuance that low-engagement content (and sites) will, over time, underperform even if they do these right, would be a great nudge in a positive direction.

Now it's your turn — where do you think I'm right? Wrong? Crazy? And what predictions are you making for SEO and search marketing in 2017?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!