AI Makes Up 0.1% of Traffic, but Clicks Aren’t Everything
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AI Makes Up 0.1% of Traffic, but Clicks Aren’t Everything

While AI traffic is growing as a referral source, Google still dominates by a factor of 345x, and Reddit out-refers all three major AIs combined. As it stands AI traffic isn’t making much of a dent, so is it worth pursuing? Here’s what we know so far… Sidenote. Thanks to our data scientist Xibeijia Guan for…

The Top 50 Ecommerce Startups by Search Growth (Q1 2025)
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The Top 50 Ecommerce Startups by Search Growth (Q1 2025)

We’ve analyzed 150K websites to find out which ecommerce startups have seen substantial search growth this year. When we see organic traffic growing, it’s a good sign that customer interest is building and brand strategy is hitting the mark. If you want a playbook for growth, our list of the top ecommerce companies can show you whose…

Are Stock Prices and Organic Traffic Correlated? I Analyzed 2,000 Public Companies to Find Out
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Are Stock Prices and Organic Traffic Correlated? I Analyzed 2,000 Public Companies to Find Out

SEO and the stock market — two completely different worlds. Yet when you run a correlation analysis between organic traffic and stock price on, say, Nasdaq, you suddenly get a strong positive correlation. Here’s why that happens and what it means. Ahrefs API and Polygon’s APIs to get the stock monthly closing price, monthly market cap,…

63% of Websites Receive AI Traffic (New Study of 3,000 Sites)
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63% of Websites Receive AI Traffic (New Study of 3,000 Sites)

We studied the traffic of 3,000 websites to better understand the size and make-up of AI traffic—including how much of it is being sent, the most common referral sources, and how that differs depending on the size of the site. We analyzed the traffic differences between sites driving greater than 10,000 visitors, between 1,000 and 9,999…

Google Says “Links Matter Less”—We Looked at 1,000,000 SERPs to See if It’s True
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Google Says “Links Matter Less”—We Looked at 1,000,000 SERPs to See if It’s True

Google has said links are less important than they used to be, and most SEOs have come to accept that as true. Our findings indicate that this is true overall, but for certain types of queries, links matter more. I still believe that links should be a part of your SEO strategy, but they shouldn’t…

Bidding on Branded Terms Increases Clicks by 18.3%
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Bidding on Branded Terms Increases Clicks by 18.3%

Get the week’s best marketing content We ran this study to find out if running paid ads cannibalize organic traffic or not. Most SEOs are against bidding on branded terms because it is believed that buying paid ads cannibalizes organic traffic and it can also impact attribution for conversions and revenue. Paid advertisers believe there is…

100 Most Expensive Keywords for Google Ads in 2025
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100 Most Expensive Keywords for Google Ads in 2025

These are the 100 most expensive keywords on Google Ads, along with their monthly search volume and cost per click (CPC). long-tail keywords (e.g., “affordable personal injury lawyer in New York”), rather than generic, broad keywords like “personal injury lawyer” Using negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing on irrelevant searches. Improving your Quality…

The 50 Fastest-Growing Companies (January 2025)
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The 50 Fastest-Growing Companies (January 2025)

We’ve analyzed 2,500 startups to identify the fastest-growing companies in search over the last year. 2024 was an especially challenging year for startups. Investors exerted extra caution in the face of inflation and rising interest rates, leading to a 26% decline in funding compared to 2023. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Sectors like AI and…

100 Most Asked Questions on Google in 2025
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100 Most Asked Questions on Google in 2025

These are the 100 most asked questions on Google, along with their monthly search volumes. Keywords Explorer Enter a relevant keyword Go to the Matching terms report Toggle the Questions tab For example, if you search for “coffee”, you can see 142,000 questions which you could potentially create content for. Want to do keyword research for your site?…

Top Google Searches (January 2025)
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Top Google Searches (January 2025)

Get the week’s best marketing content As of 2024, the most searched thing on Google is “youtube.” The next most popular searched words are “amazon,” “facebook,” “gmail,” “wordle,“and “google.” Below are lists of the top 100 most popular searches and questions in the US and worldwide, pulled from our database of 28.7 billion keywords: Keywords…