Research & Studies

Just how powerful is YouTube when it comes to ranking in Google search? That’s the question I’ll seek to address in today’s post. I’ll do that by looking at the frequency of placement in the Google search results for two different types of queries, and then comparing those rankings against how other videos rank. The […]

Imagine a world where you had a digital personal assistant that you could access with voice commands from wherever you are through any internet-connected device, and it would handle all of your online interactions for you as you move about from home to the car to work and beyond. This world is becoming a reality, […]

Read my new study titled: The Argument for AMP: Lessons from 10 Case Studies. In it, you’ll see what I learned from talking with 10 companies that implemented AMP on most or all of their site pages to try to improve their performance in Google search for mobile users. I also handcrafted AMP versions of […]

In today’s post, I’ll show you data from three different dates over the past year that illustrate why links remain a powerful ranking factor. I’ll also discuss in detail why Google still uses them, and why they are likely to remain a powerful ranking factor for some time to come. In July of 2016, we […]

Recently we published data that suggests that Google does NOT use Chrome data to discover new URLs for crawling. That surprised a lot of people because most assume that Google uses every possible source to find new content. Today, I’m publishing the results of a study that takes this process one step further. In this […]

“A Must-Read for Anyone Looking to Use Video to Boost Their Search Marketing Efforts” Greg Finn – Search Engine Land Count on it: Google is going to optimize for the best combination of user experience/satisfaction (market share) and revenue on each of its platforms. What users expect on YouTube vs. Google Search is different. Stating […]

Research reveals new insights into how featured snippets work This new study documents a never before made connection between featured snippets and regular snippets in the search results, as well as a new way to recognize when your site is competing for a featured snippet. I’m also going to detail an advanced process for obtaining […]

Research reveals new insights into how featured snippets work This new study documents a never before made connection between featured snippets and regular snippets in the search results, as well as a new way to recognize when your site is competing for a featured snippet. I’m also going to detail an advanced process for obtaining featured snippets. […]

On March 8, 2017, I published the results of our study to see which was smarter, the Google Assistant on Google Home or Alexa on the Amazon Echo. As it happens, we tested Bing’s Cortana, and Apple’s Siri all at the same time. We also tested Google search for reference purposes, since it’s historically been […]

On March 8, 2017, I published the results of our study to see which was smarter, the Google Assistant on Google Home or Alexa on the Amazon Echo. As it happens, we tested Bing’s Cortana, and Apple’s Siri all at the same time. We also tested Google search for reference purposes, since it’s historically been […]

NEW! You can now see the 2018 edition of our mobile vs. desktop study here. You may have heard a rumor that the mobile revolution is upon us, and it surely is, but just how far along have we come? In today’s post, I’m going to share hardcore stats pulled from SimilarWeb that will help […]

You may have heard a rumor that the mobile revolution is upon us, ;->, and it surely is, but just how far along have we come? In today’s post, I’m going to share hardcore stats pulled from SimilarWeb that will help you get the complete picture. The assembled data shown here is based on U.S. […]