Rand Fishkin’s Post

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Cofounder of SparkToro & Snackbar Studio. Author of Lost & Founder. Feminist. I love underdogs, cooking, & helping people do better marketing

NEW post: https://lnkd.in/guFcnh6p Almost 250,000 folks saw my research from earlier this week about where traffic referrals originate. Unfortunately, a lot of them had a worrisome takeaway that I need to address: traffic referrals ≠ sources of influence. Your audience is watching videos on YouTube. They're reading posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Threads. They're visiting broad and niche news sites. They're using productivity tools to do their jobs. Those sites send pitiful amounts of traffic but have huge amounts of influence. Please, please, please don't wrongly conflate traffic referrals with marketing opportunity. To illustrate this, I used Datos Inc's superb dataset from our original study, categorized all 170 sites in the top traffic-referrers, and broke down the share of visits vs. share of referrals. All the details and new charts are in the post.

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Antonio "Ari" Iaccarino

Content Marketing Manager | 14+ years helping companies and people tell their stories to the world 🌎| Content Strategy | Copywriting | Analytics

4mo

Really appreciate the research you’ve done along with the Datos dataset. I read both articles and have saved them for future reference. As a content person, it’s a battle to get leadership to invest in the “this is where people spend time to discover” sources, so that second image is 🤌. I’d love to know what the organic vs paid referral traffic is like for Meta products. As a small-time founder without much funding I always felt Meta was throttling outside links, and it seems very much like a pay-to-play platform. Thanks again for your work.

Andi Jarvis

Marketing strategy. Professional speaker. Strategy Sessions podcast host.

4mo

This is a very important clarification point. I pick up about 1/3 of work via LinkedIn... it sends about 4% of traffic to my site.

Jeffrey K. Rohrs

Husband. Father. 5x CMO. Speaker. Author. Adoption Network board member. Former DJ. Recovering attorney. Amateur beekeeper. Proud Clevelander.

4mo

Great clarification and overall report as usual! I was going to say, "no notes," but with two pie charts, 3.14 was just a day away... 🥧 😎 🥧 #piday

Bryan Kofsky

Growth Strategist | Digital Marketing Expert | Specializing in Lead Generation & Nurturing | Video Content Creator

4mo

Would you further drill down by saying those are channels that contain sources of influence? I would consider you (and SparkToro) to be the source of influence here, where LinkedIn is the channel.

Meg Crumbine

GTM Consultant to Female-Led Early Stage Companies | I help you achieve product-market fit, grow sales, and go-to-market with confidence | 75+ startups helped, $10m generated for clients

4mo

What is in the productivity category? Slack groups etc?

🎤 Jeff Large

Full-service podcast production for B2B companies. Owner & Founder of Come Alive.

4mo

Great points. Makes me think about my current search journey. I'm potentially going to buy a motorcycle this summer and have been looking at the Triumph line. I've been spending a bunch of time watching YouTube views and reading Reddit from actual cyclist. However, I'm tracking down places to actually buy one through Google.

David Marsh

Founder at Wave | GTM Leader | Writer at Defender | Husband & Dad

4mo

Outstanding research Rand. As someone who's been doing SEO for a while, current analysis like this is gold for focusing on what matters.

Rui Martins

Co-Fundador na SmartLinks | Especialista em Estratégia de Marketing e Vendas

4mo

Yes!! Great clarification. So many professionals still mix referral with influence. There are many reasons for this and I think that GA4 being extremely biased doesn't help either. One single example: - Acquisition conversion events only look back up to 30 days. - All other conversion events look back up to 90 days. This is super important, since whenever you look at conversions by "first visit / click" this reports tells you exactly where they came from, and also keep that record attached to that user ID. All other conversion events use Google Signals allowing for « Google to see users' engagements on Google real estate. This simple tweak completely hinders your hability to correctly pin point which sources influenced the conversion... Again, only one example amongst many others. From Portugal, with love! Keep rocking Rand Fishkin!! Just love your work!

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Lee Wilson

Service Operations Director

4mo

Great point - it can be easy to exclude something based on a metric that is not really suited to the channel, or giving a complete picture of its contribution to wider success.

Younus Iqbal

Experienced Digital Marketer with a Focus on Social Media and Google Ads (PPC) | Completed 400+ Projects | Helping Founders, Businesses, & Service Providers to generate Potential Leads & Sales | Media Buyer

4mo

Thank you for shedding light on this important distinction! It's crucial to recognize that traffic referrals don't always equate to sources of influence. Your analysis provides valuable insights, reminding us to look beyond traffic numbers and consider the true impact of various platforms and channels.

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