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Google Search is huge, but how big? What are people searching for, and how is AI changing things? Here are the latest stats to catch you up:
social.semrush.com/4hCdsX9.
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SaaS is being dismantled as we speak!
We're witnessing the slow-motion collapse of an entire business model that dominated tech for two decades. The $1.3 trillion SaaS is being quietly hollowed out from within by AI agents.
Here's how I see it playing out:
Phase 1 (Now): AI as co-pilot. We're seeing this everywhere, Copilot for developers, Gamma for presentations, Harvey for legal research etc. These AI layers sit atop existing software, making it more efficient.
The SaaS companies feel safe, even excited, as AI seems to make their products more valuable. They're bringing knives to what they think is a knife fight.
Phase 2 (Next 12-18 months): The agent invasion. AI moves from co-pilot to autonomous operator. They're replacement workers that can fully operate existing software on your behalf.
The dam breaks when someone can say "analyze our Q2 performance" rather than clicking through Tableau, or "optimize our ad campaigns" instead of navigating Meta's ad manager. The expertise previously bundled with the software gets unbundled by agents.
Phase 3 (2-3 years): Software invisibility. The final phase happens when the agents bypass the human interfaces altogether. Why render dashboards, buttons and menus when AI can just access the APIs directly?
The value proposition of SaaS, bundling software, workflow, and expertise into user-friendly interfaces unravels completely. The interfaces were designed for humans, but agents don't need them.
Most SaaS incumbents don't see it coming because this isn't a classic disruption pattern. It's not about competing products with better features. It's about the evaporation of the core assumption that humans will operate software.
What's more, the barrier to creating custom, internal software is collapsing simultaneously. Companies that once had to choose between expensive custom development or off-the-shelf SaaS can now spin up bespoke solutions in days instead of months. Why pay Hubspot $1,500/month for a CRM when your team can build 'HubspotForUs' with an AI coding assistant over a weekend? The same features, perfectly tailored to your workflow, with no ongoing subscription costs.
This democratization of software creation means every company becomes a potential software producer rather than just a consumer. The specialized knowledge that SaaS companies monopolized is now available to anyone with access to an AI coding agent and domain expertise.
It went from $1M to build an MVP to build a SaaS to basically free overnight.
I bet the metrics will be puzzling at first, DAUs remain strong while feature usage mysteriously declines. The power users who drive revenue suddenly need fewer seats.
Customer success calls shift from "how do I use this feature?" to "can your software work with my AI agent?"
Or worse: "we built our own version that better fits our workflow."
The survivors won't be those with the best features or even those who add AI features fastest (from no AI to "ai-assisted").
The winners will be companies that expose their software's capabilities through agent-friendly APIs and position themselves as the most trustworthy information sources and execution engines in their domain.
There's also the shift from monthly subscriptions to outcome based software (pay per outcome, pay per task etc) but that's a tweet for another day!
The $1T question: Will Microsoft, Atlassian, Adobe etc. successfully navigate this transition, or will they be the Digital Equipment Corporation of our era too invested in the previous paradigm to adapt to the new one?
All I know is this will be a golden era for startups in the space.
SaaS is being dismantled, piece by piece, workflow by workflow, interface by interface.
Am I wrong?
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Huge heads-up! The manual actions for 'Site reputation abuse' have already started going out based on the policy update. Jason Kilgore first pinged me on LinkedIn that Forbes Advisor is not ranking for what it once was (not even for the query 'Forbes Advisor')... and it looks like the directory has been deindexed. Then I checked CNN Underscored. Same deal. And then WSJ Buyside. Same deal. Here is one of the manual actions just applied for a site impacted (not one mentioned above). So yes, Google has moved quickly with applying manual actions based on the new policy. Stay tuned.
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What type of pages are the easiest to get SEO traffic to?
We looked at a variety of web pages on over 15,000 sites to find the answer.
Here are the best performing type of pages when it comes to getting traffic from Google.
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"What's ChatGPT's share of search?"
Very tough to answer. But, if we assume:
- Every LLM prompt is a "search"
- Desktop + mobile web traffic, excluding apps, is close enough
- Mixing data from multiple panels is kosher
Here's what it looks like 👇👇👇
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Big news -> DOJ antitrust officials plan to ask a judge to force Google to sell Chrome, license Search data, uncouple Android from Search and Google Play, and more bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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ICYMI: Most SEOs think Microsoft Bing will gain 5% or less in terms of marketshare with this new Bing ChatGPT AI copilot seroundtable.com/poll-micros…
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Establishing a local SEO strategy is one of the key things every local business should focus on. Here are some tips on how to skyrocket it: returnonnow.com/2018/12/5-im… via @ReturnOnNow #localseo #digitalmarketing
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54 Local SEO Experts Share Insights on Local Search and Link Outreach
@benwynkoop1
@nickneels
@AdamGSteele
@CaseyMeraz
@dohertyjf
@MisterCausey
@tommy_landry
@SusanHallam
Full list: bit.ly/2UjIRCQ via @E2MSolutions
#SEO #SearchEngineOptimization #LinkBuilding
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Which KPIs are most important for measuring the success of your Facebook Ad campaign?
@tommy_landry from @ReturnOnNow weighs in regarding impression share 👇🏻
hubs.ly/H0fZcgw0
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@tommy_landry recommends display #ads:
“Initially, we recommended focusing on search, primarily because of past observations supporting it as having a higher ROI. We were absolutely wrong. ..”
Full report here: hubs.ly/H0dBQ1Y0
#FacebookAds #digitalmarketing #google
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How to Approach Link Building The Right Way: 7 Key Steps by @tommy_landry b2c.news/UTWfFV via @B2Community
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Check out @ReturnOnNow in The Huffington Post! Woot! huffingtonpost.com/entry/598… #marketing #sales #success #websites #smallbusiness #smallbiz
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SEO Nightmare! When NoIndex Tags Go Bad buff.ly/1S0fTUU #seo
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"If you are in it for the long haul, SEO is an absolute must for any size business." - @tommy_landry bit.ly/2cFgFqH
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Hey @shane_barker @seosteve @onreact_com @tom_bourlet @tommy_landry thanks for sharing your expertise ow.ly/FZDn3028rab
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Top 12 Lame Excuses For Not Doing SEO by @tommy_landry b2c.news/f1VLje via @B2Community
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Would you like to write for us? Here's what we're looking for in an Inbound Original guest post. j.mp/1Srf8U6
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The ThingsWP Daily is out! paper.li/thingswp/1390971494… Stories via @wistia @ReturnOnNow @VisitAustinTX




























