SEO
Everything You Need To Know
Performance Max has taken Google’s center stage in the last few years.
Originally launched in 2021, this PPC campaign type has been met with both praise and criticism among advertisers.
But with AI and machine learning in full force Performance Max isn’t something to ignore anymore.
Keep reading to understand the ins and outs of what Performance Max is, how it works, and how to best leverage it for optimal results.
What Is Performance Max?
Performance Max (PMax) is a unique, automated campaign type in Google Ads.
It utilizes Google’s machine learning capabilities to drive more conversions across all of Google’s owned inventory. PMax ads can serve across:
- Search.
- Display.
- YouTube.
- Discover.
- Gmail.
- Maps.
Ads are automatically created from advertiser inputs, similar to how responsive search and display ads are created.
Like its name, PMax is driven by specified conversion goals at the campaign level.
How Does Performance Max Work?
Performance Max uses machine learning models to drive more conversions by optimizing bids and placements in real time. PMax uses Smart Bidding to achieve these goals.
Google’s AI technology looks across many factors when optimizing PMax campaigns, including:
- Audiences.
- Creatives.
- Budget optimization.
- Bidding strategy
- Attribution
- And more.
Simply put, in order for PMax to work, advertisers need to provide the best inputs for machine learning and AI technologies to work.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the key inputs to launch a Performance Max campaign.
Budget And Bidding
The first input is bidding-focused. You’ll choose what to focus on:
- Conversions.
- Conversion value.
Additionally, you can set a target cost per action (CPA) or target return on ad spend (ROAS), which is optional.
Next, you have the option to bid differently for new customer acquisition.
By default, the option is set to bid higher for new customers. This means the campaign will still reach all potential customers, but prioritize net new customers with a higher bid.
In order to use new customer acquisition, the following inputs are required:
- The bidding strategy type needs to be “Maximize Conversion Value.”
- An audience segment with at least 1,000 active members to help identify existing customers.
Location, Language, And Ad Scheduling
Next, you’ll choose your location settings.
The most recent update of Google Ads Editor fully supports PMax campaigns, which will be helpful if you need to include a lot of individual locations.
You can also bulk import them in the online interface by clicking “advanced search”:
Screenshot from Google Ads, October 2023After that, you’ll choose targeted languages, ad schedule (if applicable), and campaign run dates.
Automatically Created Assets
Within PMax campaign settings, there’s a section called “automatically created assets.”
By default, these are checked on for text assets and final URL, which is important to review.
If these remain selected, you’re allowing Google to create new text assets for ads that are based on your landing page, domain, and other ads.
It also means that Google has the right to change the final URL to send traffic to what it deems is the most appropriate landing page, even if you provided an input.
When in doubt, turn these settings off to retain as much control in the beginning.
Screenshot from Google Ads, October 2023Asset Groups (Aka “Ads”)
This is where the bulk of the PMax setup happens.
The following assets are set at this level:
- Final URL – This is where the user will be directed after clicking on an ad.
- Images – Up to 20 images can be added. A combination of landscape, square, and portrait orientations is recommended.
- Logos – At least one square logo is required. Optional landscape logos are recommended.
- Videos – Up to five videos can be added. Note that if no videos are added, Google will create automated videos when possible.
- Headlines – Up to 15 headlines can be added. Each headline has a 30-character limit.
- Long headlines – Up to five long headlines can be added. Each has a 90-character limit.
- Descriptions – A short description of 60 characters is required. Up to 4 additional descriptions with a 90-character limit.
- Business name – This field is required, with a 25-character limit.
- Sitelinks – At least two are required in order for sitelinks to show in ads. The recommended number is at least four.
- Call to action – This can be automated, where Google tests different CTAs, or you can choose from different options.
- Audience signal – Be sure to add relevant audience signals, such as customer lists or in-market segments, to help Google find new customers faster.
Screenshot from Google Ads, October 2023It’s important to note that with audience signals, think of them more like audience “suggestions.”
By adding audience signals, your campaigns can be targeted to those signals, but not exclusively.
Google will use the audience signal inputs to identify similar customers who are more likely to purchase your product or service.
Additional, optional asset types can be set at this level, including:
- Promotions.
- Prices.
- Calls.
- Structured snippets.
- Lead forms.
- Callouts.
- Display path.
What Is The Difference Between Performance Max, Search Ads, And Demand Gen Ads?
Performance Max is certainly a different breed of campaign type.
Per Google, PMax is meant to complement keyword-based Search campaigns to help drive more customers. They are not meant to be a replacement.
There are three key differences between the different campaign types:
- Placements.
- Intention.
- Targeting options.
The biggest difference between PMax vs. Search ads or Demand Gen ads is placement options.
With Performance Max, ads are adapted and served across all of Google’s inventory of Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Maps.
Search campaigns are shown strictly on the Google search results page, as well as its Search Partners network if campaigns are opted in.
Demand Gen (formerly Discovery) campaigns are more visually focused, with ads appearing across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail placements.
Another big difference between the three campaign types is their intent:
- Performance Max: targets users across various platforms regardless of intent.
- Search: targets users with higher intent (actively searching for a product or service).
- Demand Gen: targets users who are exploring content or show signs of interest.
Lastly, there are differentiators in how each campaign type can target users:
- Performance Max: Uses machine learning and audience signals to optimize targeting.
- Search: Primarily uses keyword targeting, with other levers available like demographics, interests, and first-party data.
- Demand Gen: Primarily targets users based on interests and behaviors.
Each campaign type has its unique advantages and is mainly driven by different marketing objectives.
What Are The Benefits Of Performance Max?
While PMax is an automated campaign type, it certainly has its benefits to running a campaign.
Here are some of the key benefits of PMax campaigns:
- Cross-platform reach – This is the only campaign type that allows you to reach users across the entire scope of Google inventory in one campaign. With that, it opens up additional audiences that you may not have reached in singular campaign types.
- Automated bidding – Google manages the heavy lifting of optimizing bids for the right user at the right time with the right message. Not only that, Google optimizes budget across the different placements based on performance.
- Simplified campaign management – PMax provides unified reporting across all platforms, reduces the amount of manual work (like bid adjustments), and they’re relatively easy to set up (if you know what to look for in settings).
- Advanced creative capabilities – You’re able to leverage a large variety of ad formats because ads can be placed across all of Google’s inventory. Additionally, Google automatically tests different formats and combinations to reach peak effectiveness.
- Adaptiveness – At the heart of PMax is its machine learning capabilities. That means the algorithms quickly adapt to sudden user behavior changes, market trends, or seasonality.
Who Should Use Performance Max?
Certain industries are likely to benefit more from PMax than others.
A good gauge to determine if PMax is right for your brand relies on the following:
- How quickly sales or purchases are generated.
- Budget flexibility.
- Sufficient creative assets.
Typically, Performance Max works well for ecommerce brands, especially if product feeds are enabled within the campaign.
If you’re a brand that has a relatively short sales or purchase cycle, PMax can help drive incremental conversions.
However, if your business is primarily lead generation or has a long sales cycle, this may not be the campaign type for you.
Part of the beauty of PMax is that it relies on conversion history data, so if conversion volume is sparse, performance may be hindered.
The second indicator of whether Performance Max is for you relates to budget.
If budget is strict or constantly limited, campaigns may not reach their full potential because of limited learnings.
At a minimum, it’s recommended to spend at least $50-$100 per day for 30 days to determine results.
Lastly, if your brand has the ability to create and maintain a healthy volume of creative assets, PMax is worth testing.
Brands that have limited creative resources or strict brand guidelines may not benefit from leveraging this automated campaign type.
5 Best Practices For Performance Max
Success lies within the settings.
Because Performance Max is so automated, it still requires human input and observations to get the most bang for your buck.
Below are five best practices for implementing and optimizing PMax campaigns.
#1: Ensure Conversion Tracking Implementation Is Accurate
PMax relies on conversion data to fully optimize and target effectively.
That’s why accurate conversion tracking is so crucial to success.
Make sure that the appropriate conversion points are tracking accurately, as well as import any offline conversion data if applicable.
This is considered full-funnel conversion tracking, which allows Google to see the whole picture of how your customers convert.
#2: Select The Appropriate Goal And Targets For Bidding Strategy
It’s important to have some sort of idea of what a customer is worth to you.
If you have historical KPIs of target CPA or target ROAS, use those as a starting point when setting your bid strategy.
Setting the goals too high or too low can produce significant volatility in campaign performance.
For example, a typical branded search campaign likely has a much higher ROAS than a non-branded campaign.
Don’t set your conversion targets in accordance with what you see for brand terms. By doing so, targeting and reach may become limited, which means fewer conversions and poor performance.
#3: Remember To Check Automated Assets Settings
The automated settings discussed at the beginning are so important that it’s worth repeating again here.
Advertisers still need to maintain some level of control. This holds even more true for highly regulated industries.
If you have a specific landing page to send users to, turn off the URL expansion setting at the campaign level.
If you need to maintain complete control of ad copy and assets, make sure to uncheck the box that allows Google to create and implement assets on your behalf.
#4: Use High-intent Audience Signals To Start
Another “make or break” setting to keep in mind is audience signals.
Audience signals essentially give Google a guide on what types of customers to find and go after.
Start by adding high-intent audience signals to your PMax campaigns to kickstart performance.
High-intent audience signals could include:
- 1st party customer or purchase data.
- Website visitors or engagers.
- In-market audiences.
- Custom or combination audiences.
Adding broad audience signals like affinity or lifestyle segments won’t be enough for Google to learn who your best customer is.
#5: Add Brand Terms As Negative Keywords To Avoid Cannibalization
When PMax first launched, many advertisers were shocked at how well their campaigns were performing.
Until they reviewed their Branded search campaigns.
As a reminder, PMax is an automated campaign type, which means you can’t target keywords. But you can exclude them.
As Performance Max continues to sophisticate, Google now allows negative keyword lists for these campaigns.
At the very minimum, create a list of targeted brand keywords and exclude them in PMax.
This allows your tried-and-true search campaign to run and optimize per usual, without PMax cannibalizing any existing efforts, and truly be used as a complement to search campaigns.
In Summary
Performance Max campaigns can be a powerful tool for many advertisers if set up and managed the right way.
As with all new campaign types, it’s worth testing to identify if it’s suitable for your brand.
By having a clear understanding of objectives, goals, audience targeting, and creative direction, Performance Max can be the boost your PPC program needs to drive more customers on a greater scale.
More resources:
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
SEO
7 Strategies to Lower Cost-Per-Lead
SEO for personal injury law firms is notorious for how expensive and competitive it can be. Even with paid ads, it’s common for every click from the ad to your website to cost hundreds of dollars:
When spending this kind of money per click, the cost of gaining new cases can quickly skyrocket. Since SEO focuses on improving your visibility in the unpaid areas of search engines, you can cut costs and get more leads if you’re savvy enough.
Here are the strategies I’ve used to help new and boutique injury and accident law firms compete with the big guns for a fraction of the cost.
Recommendation
Unlike many other local service businesses, personal injury law firms need to work harder to earn trust and credibility online.
This applies to earning trust from humans and search engines alike. Google has a 170-page document called the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. This document contains two frameworks law firms can use to help Google and website visitors trust them more.
The first is “your money or your life,” or YMYL. Google uses this term to describe topics that may present a high risk of harm to searchers. Generally, any health, finances, safety, or welfare information falls into this category. Legal information is also a YMYL topic since acting on the wrong information could cause serious damage or harm to searchers.
The second framework is EEAT, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
This framework applies more broadly to all industries and is about sharing genuine information written by experts and authorities for a given topic. Both YMYL and EEAT consider the extent to which content is accurate, honest, safe, and reliable, with the ultimate goal of delivering trustworthy information.
Here are the things I implement for my personal injury clients as a priority to improve the trustworthiness of their online presence:
- Prominently display star ratings from third-party platforms, like Google or FaceBook reviews.
- Show your accreditations, certifications, awards, and the stats on cases you’ve won.
- If government-issued ratings or licenses apply to your practice areas, show those too.
- Add contact information like your phone number and address in the footer of every page.
- Share details of every member of your firm, highlighting their expertise and cases they’ve won.
- Add links to your professional profiles online, including social media and law-related listings.
- Include photos of your team and offices, results, case studies, and success stories.
Generally speaking, your Google Business listing can account for over 50% of the leads you get from search engines. That’s because it can display prominently in the maps pack, like so: 
Without a Google Business listing, your firm will not show up here or within Google Maps since it is managed completely separately from your website. Think of your Google listing like a social profile, but optimize it like a website. Make sure you create one of these for each location where you have an on-the-ground presence, ideally an established office.
Take the time to fill out all the details it asks for, especially:
- Your firm’s name, address, and phone number
- Your services with a description of each
- Images of your premises, inside and outside the office
And anything else you see in these sections: 
Also, make it a regular habit to ask your clients for reviews.
Reviews are crucial for law firms. They are the number one deciding factor when someone is ready to choose a law firm to work with. While you can send automated text messages with a link to your Google profile, you’ll likely have a higher success rate if you ask clients in person while they’re in your office or by calling them.
I’ve also seen success when adding a request for a review on thank you pages.
For instance, if you ever send an electronic contract or invoice out to clients, once they’ve signed or paid, you can send them to a thank you page that also asks for a review. Here’s my favorite example of this from a local accountant. You can emulate this concept for your own website too:
Recommendation
The most common way that people search for legal services is by searching for things like “personal injury lawyer near me” or “car accident lawyer new york”.
For instance, take a look at the monthly search volume on these “near me” keywords for an injury and accident lawyer:
People also commonly search at a state, city, and even suburb level for many legal services, especially if it’s an area of law that differs based on someone’s location. To optimize your website architecture for location keywords like these, it’s best practice to create dedicated pages for each location and then add sub-pages for each of your practice areas in that location.
For example, here’s what that would look like:
The corresponding URL structure would look like this:
- /new-york
- /new-york/car-accident-lawyer
- /new-york/personal-injury-lawyer
- /new-york/work-injury-lawyer
Pro Tip:
Check out my guide on franchise SEO for local and national growth strategies if you have many offices nationwide.
A topic hub is a way to organize and link between related articles on a website. It’s sometimes referred to as a topic cluster because it groups together pages that are related to the same subject matter.
If you run a small firm or your marketing budget is tight, I recommend focusing on a single area of law and turning your website into a topical hub. You can do this by publishing different types of content, such as how-to guides, answering common questions, and creating landing pages for each of your services.
For example, if you currently offer services for immigration law, criminal defense, and personal injury compensation, each appeals to very different audience segments. They’re also very competitive when it comes to marketing, so focusing your efforts on one of these is ideal to make your budget go further.
Most areas of law are naturally suited to building out topic clusters. Every practice area tends to follow a similar pattern in how people search at different stages in their journey.
- Top-of-funnel: When people are very early in their journey, and unaware of what type of lawyer they need, they ask a lot of high-level questions like “what is a car accident attorney”.
- Mid-funnel: When people are in the middle of their journey, they tend to ask more nuanced questions or look for more detailed information, like “average settlement for neck injury”.
- Bottom-of-funnel: When people are ready to hire an attorney, they search for the practice area + “attorney” or “lawyer”. Sometimes they include a location but nothing else. For example, “personal injury lawyer”.
This pattern applies to most areas of law. To apply it to your website, enter your main practice area and a few variations into Keywords Explorer:
Make sure to include a few different variations like how I’ve added different ways people search for lawyers (lawyer, attorney, solicitor) and also for other related terms (compensation, personal injury, settlement).
If you check the Matching terms report, you’ll generally get a big list that you’ll need to filter to make it more manageable when turning it into a content plan.
For example, there are 164,636 different keyword variations of how people search for personal injury lawyers. These generate over 2.4 million searches per month in the US.
You can make the list more manageable by removing keywords with no search volume. Just set the minimum volume to 1:
You can also use the include filter to only see keywords containing your location for your location landing pages:
There are also a number of distinct sub-themes relevant to your area of law. To isolate these, you can use the Cluster by Terms side panel. For instance, looking at our list of injury-related keywords, you can easily spot specific body parts that emerge as sub-themes:
Other sub-themes include:
- How the accident happened (at work, in a car)
- How much compensation someone can get (compensation, average, settlement)
- How severe the injury was (traumatic)
Each of these sub-themes can be turned into a cluster. Here’s what it might look like for the topic of neck injuries:
People tend to ask a lot of questions related to most areas of law. As you go through the exercise of planning out your topic clusters, you should also consider building out a knowledge hub where people can more easily navigate your FAQs and find the answers they’re looking for.
Use the knowledge base exclusively for question-related content. You can find the most popular questions people ask after an accident or injury in the Matching terms > Questions tab:
You can also easily see clusters of keywords for the top-of-funnel and mid-funnel questions people ask by checking the Clusters by Parent Topic report. It groups these keywords into similar themes and each group can likely be covered in a single article.
Here’s an example of how Smith’s Lawyers has created a knowledge base with a search feature and broad categories to allow people to find answers to all their questions more easily.
The easier you make it for people to find answers on your website, the less inclined they are to go back to Google and potentially visit a competitor’s website instead. It also increases their interaction time with your brand, giving you a higher chance of being front-of-mind when they are ready to speak to a lawyer about their case.
Some areas of law lend themselves to certain types of interactive content. An obvious example is a compensation calculator for injury and accident claims. Doing a very quick search, there are over 1,500 keywords on this topic searched over 44,000 times a month in the US.
The best part is how insanely low the competition is on these keywords:
Keyword difficulty is graded on a 100-point scale, so single-digit figures mean there’s virtually no competition to contend with. It’s not all that hard to create a calculator either.
There are many low-cost, no-code tools on the market, like Outgrow, that allow you to create a simple calculator in no time. Other types of interactive content you could consider are:
- Quiz-style questionnaires: great for helping people decide if they need a lawyer for their case.
- Chatbots: to answer people’s questions in real-time.
- Assessments: to pre-qualify leads before they book a meeting with you.
- Calendar or countdown clock: to help people keep track of imminent deadlines.
Backlinks are like the internet’s version of citations. They are typically dark blue, underlined text that connects you to a different page on the internet. In SEO, links play a very important role for a few different reasons:
- Links are how search engines discover new content. Your content may not be discovered if you have no links pointing to it.
- Links are like votes in a popularity contest. The more you have from authoritative websites in your industry, the more they elevate your brand.
- Links also help search engines understand what different websites are about. Getting links from other law-related websites will help build relevancy to your brand.
Think of link building as a scaled-down version of PR. It’s often easier and cheaper to implement. However, it is very time-intensive in most cases. If you’re doing your own SEO, hats off to you!
However, I’d recommend you consider partnering with an agency that specializes in law firm SEO and can handle link building for you. Typically, agencies like these will have existing relationships with law-related websites where they can feature your brand, which will be completely hands-off for you.
For instance, Webris has a database of thousands of legal websites on which they have been able to feature their clients. If you don’t have an existing database to work with and you’re doing SEO yourself, here are some alternative tactics to consider.
Expert quotes
Many journalists and writers benefit from quoting subject-matter experts in their content. You could be such an expert, and every time someone quotes you, ask for a link back to your website. Check out platforms like Muck Rack or SourceBottle, where reporters post callouts for specific experts they’re looking to get quotes from or feature in their articles.
Guest posting
If you like writing content, you can alternatively create content for other people’s websites and include links back to your site. This approach is more time intensive. To make the effort worth it, reach out to websites with an established audience so you get some additional brand exposure too.
Updating outdated content
If you’re checking out other people’s legal content and you ever notice a mistake or outdated information, you could reach out and offer to help them correct it in exchange for a link to your website.
Naturally, you’ll need to recommend updates for sections of content that relate to your practice areas for this to work and for the link to make sense in the context of the content.
Final thoughts
SEO for personal injury lawyers is one of the most competitive niches. High advertising costs and high competition levels make it difficult for new or small firms to compete against industry giants.
As a new or emerging firm, you can take a more nimble approach and outrank the big firms for low competition keywords they haven’t optimized their websites for. It’s all about doing thorough research to uncover these opportunities in your practice area.
Want to know more? Reach out on LinkedIn.
SEO
Google Ads To Phase Out Enhanced CPC Bidding Strategy
Google has announced plans to discontinue its Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) bidding strategy for search and display ad campaigns.
This change, set to roll out in stages over the coming months, marks the end of an era for one of Google’s earliest smart bidding options.
Dates & Changes
Starting October 2024, new search and display ad campaigns will no longer be able to select Enhanced CPC as a bidding strategy.
However, existing eCPC campaigns will continue to function normally until March 2025.
From March 2025, all remaining search and display ad campaigns using Enhanced CPC will be automatically migrated to manual CPC bidding.
Advertisers who prefer not to change their campaigns before this date will see their bidding strategy default to manual CPC.
Impact On Display Campaigns
No immediate action is required for advertisers running display campaigns with the Maximize Clicks strategy and Enhanced CPC enabled.
These campaigns will automatically transition to the Maximize Clicks bidding strategy in March 2025.
Rationale Behind The Change
Google introduced Enhanced CPC over a decade ago as its first Smart Bidding strategy. The company has since developed more advanced machine learning-driven bidding options, such as Maximize Conversions with an optional target CPA and Maximize Conversion Value with an optional target ROAS.
In an email to affected advertisers, Google stated:
“These strategies have the potential to deliver comparable or superior outcomes. As we transition to these improved strategies, search and display ads campaigns will phase out Enhanced CPC.”
What This Means for Advertisers
This update signals Google’s continued push towards more sophisticated, AI-driven bidding strategies.
In the coming months, advertisers currently relying on Enhanced CPC will need to evaluate their options and potentially adapt their campaign management approaches.
While the change may require some initial adjustments, it also allows advertisers to explore and leverage Google’s more advanced bidding strategies, potentially improving campaign performance and efficiency.
FAQ
What change is Google implementing for Enhanced CPC bidding?
Google will discontinue the Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) bidding strategy for search and display ad campaigns.
- New search and display ad campaigns can’t select eCPC starting October 2024.
- Existing campaigns will function with eCPC until March 2025.
- From March 2025, remaining eCPC campaigns will switch to manual CPC bidding.
How will this update impact existing campaigns using Enhanced CPC?
Campaigns using Enhanced CPC will continue as usual until March 2025. After that:
- Search and display ad campaigns employing eCPC will automatically migrate to manual CPC bidding.
- Display campaigns with Maximize Clicks and eCPC enabled will transition to the Maximize Clicks strategy in March 2025.
What are the recommended alternatives to Enhanced CPC?
Google suggests using its more advanced, AI-driven bidding strategies:
- Maximize Conversions – Can include an optional target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).
- Maximize Conversion Value – Can include an optional target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
These strategies are expected to deliver comparable or superior outcomes compared to Enhanced CPC.
What should advertisers do in preparation for this change?
Advertisers need to evaluate their current reliance on Enhanced CPC and explore alternatives:
- Assess how newer AI-driven bidding strategies can be integrated into their campaigns.
- Consider transitioning some campaigns earlier to adapt to the new strategies gradually.
- Leverage tools and resources provided by Google to maximize performance and efficiency.
This proactive approach will help manage changes smoothly and explore potential performance improvements.
Featured Image: Vladimka production/Shutterstock
SEO
The 25 Biggest Traffic Losers in SaaS
We analyzed the organic traffic growth of 1,600 SaaS companies to discover the SEO strategies that work best in 2024…
…and those that work the worst.
In this article, we’re looking at the companies that lost the greatest amount of estimated organic traffic, year over year.
- We analyzed 1,600 SaaS companies and used the Ahrefs API to pull estimated monthly organic traffic data for August 2023 and August 2024.
- Companies were ranked by estimated monthly organic traffic loss as a percentage of their starting traffic.
- We’ve filtered out traffic loss caused by website migrations and URL redirects and set a minimum starting traffic threshold of 10,000 monthly organic pageviews.
This is a list of the SaaS companies that had the greatest estimated monthly organic traffic loss from August 2023 to August 2024.
Sidenote.
Our organic traffic metrics are estimates, and not necessarily reflective of the company’s actual traffic (only they know that). Traffic loss is not always bad, and there are plenty of reasons why companies may choose to delete pages and sacrifice keyword rankings.
| Rank | Company | Change | Monthly Organic Traffic 2023 | Monthly Organic Traffic 2024 | Traffic Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Causal | -99.52% | 307,158 | 1,485 | -305,673 |
| 2 | Contently | -97.16% | 276,885 | 7,866 | -269,019 |
| 3 | Datanyze | -95.46% | 486,626 | 22,077 | -464,549 |
| 4 | BetterCloud | -94.14% | 42,468 | 2,489 | -39,979 |
| 5 | Ricotta Trivia | -91.46% | 193,713 | 16,551 | -177,162 |
| 6 | Colourbox | -85.43% | 67,883 | 9,888 | -57,995 |
| 7 | Tabnine | -84.32% | 160,328 | 25,142 | -135,186 |
| 8 | AppFollow | -83.72% | 35,329 | 5,753 | -29,576 |
| 9 | Serverless | -80.61% | 37,896 | 7,348 | -30,548 |
| 10 | UserGuiding | -80.50% | 115,067 | 22,435 | -92,632 |
| 11 | Hopin | -79.25% | 19,581 | 4,064 | -15,517 |
| 12 | Writer | -78.32% | 2,460,359 | 533,288 | -1,927,071 |
| 13 | NeverBounce by ZoomInfo | -77.91% | 552,780 | 122,082 | -430,698 |
| 14 | ZoomInfo | -76.11% | 5,192,624 | 1,240,481 | -3,952,143 |
| 15 | Sakari | -73.76% | 27,084 | 7,106 | -19,978 |
| 16 | Frase | -71.39% | 83,569 | 23,907 | -59,662 |
| 17 | LiveAgent | -70.03% | 322,613 | 96,700 | -225,913 |
| 18 | Scoro | -70.01% | 51,701 | 15,505 | -36,196 |
| 19 | accessiBe | -69.45% | 111,877 | 34,177 | -77,700 |
| 20 | Olist | -67.51% | 204,298 | 66,386 | -137,912 |
| 21 | Hevo Data | -66.96% | 235,427 | 77,781 | -157,646 |
| 22 | TextGears | -66.68% | 19,679 | 6,558 | -13,121 |
| 23 | Unbabel | -66.40% | 45,987 | 15,450 | -30,537 |
| 24 | Courier | -66.03% | 35,300 | 11,992 | -23,308 |
| 25 | G2 | -65.74% | 4,397,226 | 1,506,545 | -2,890,681 |
For each of the top five companies, I ran a five-minute analysis using Ahrefs Site Explorer to understand what may have caused their traffic decline.
Possible explanations include Google penalties, programmatic SEO, and AI content.
| Causal | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic | 307,158 | 1,485 | -305,673 | -99.52% |
| Organic pages | 5,868 | 547 | -5,321 | -90.68% |
| Organic keywords | 222,777 | 4,023 | -218,754 | -98.19% |
| Keywords in top 3 | 8,969 | 26 | -8943 | -99.71% |
Causal is a finance platform for startups. They lost an estimated 99.52% of their organic traffic as a result of a Google manual penalty:
This story might sound familiar. Causal became internet-famous for an “SEO heist” that saw them clone a competitor’s sitemap and use generative AI to publish 1,800 low-quality articles like this:
Google caught wind and promptly issued a manual penalty. Causal lost hundreds of rankings and hundreds of thousands of pageviews, virtually overnight:
As the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar shows, the offending blog posts are now 301 redirected to the company’s (now much better, much more human-looking) blog homepage:
| Contently | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic | 276,885 | 7,866 | -269,019 | -97.16% |
| Organic pages | 32,752 | 1,121 | -31,631 | -96.58% |
| Organic keywords | 94,706 | 12,000 | -82,706 | -87.33% |
| Keywords in top 3 | 1,874 | 68 | -1,806 | -96.37% |
Contently is a content marketing platform. They lost 97% of their estimated organic traffic by removing thousands of user-generated pages.
Almost all of the website’s traffic loss seems to stem from deindexing the subdomains used to host their members’ writing portfolios:
A quick Google search for “contently writer portfolios” suggests that the company made the deliberate decision to deindex all writer portfolios by default, and only relist them once they’ve been manually vetted and approved:
We can see that these portfolio subdomains are now 302 redirected back to Contently’s homepage:
And looking at the keyword rankings Contently lost in the process, it’s easy to guess why this change was necessary. It looks like the free portfolio subdomains were being abused to promote CBD gummies and pirated movies:
| Datanyze | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic | 486,626 | 22,077 | -464,549 | -95.46% |
| Organic pages | 1,168,889 | 377,142 | -791,747 | -67.74% |
| Organic keywords | 2,565,527 | 712,270 | -1,853,257 | -72.24% |
| Keywords in top 3 | 7,475 | 177 | -7,298 | -97.63% |
Datanyze provides contact data for sales prospecting. They lost 96% of their estimated organic traffic, possibly as a result of programmatic content that Google has since deemed too low quality to rank.
Looking at the Site Structure report in Ahrefs, we can see over 80% of the website’s organic traffic loss is isolated to the /companies and /people subfolders:
Looking at some of the pages in these subfolders, it looks like Datanyze built thousands of programmatic landing pages to help promote the people and companies the company offers data for:
As a result, the majority of Datanyze’s dropped keyword rankings are names of people and companies:
Many of these pages still return 200 HTTP status codes, and a Google site search still shows hundreds of indexed pages:
In this case, not all of the programmatic pages have been deleted—instead, it’s possible that Google has decided to rerank these pages into much lower positions and drop them from most SERPs.
| BetterCloud | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic | 42,468 | 2,489 | -39,979 | -94.14% |
| Organic pages | 1,643 | 504 | -1,139 | -69.32% |
| Organic keywords | 107,817 | 5,806 | -102,011 | -94.61% |
| Keywords in top 3 | 1,550 | 32 | -1,518 | -97.94% |
Bettercloud is a SaaS spend management platform. They lost 94% of their estimated organic traffic around the time of Google’s November Core Update:
Looking at the Top Pages report for BetterCloud, most of the traffic loss can be traced back to a now-deleted /academy subfolder:
The pages in the subfolder are now deleted, but by using Ahrefs’ Page Inspect feature, it’s possible to look at a snapshot of some of the pages’ HTML content.
This short, extremely generic article on “How to Delete an Unwanted Page in Google Docs” looks a lot like basic AI-generated content:
This is the type of content that Google has been keen to demote from the SERPs.
Given the timing of the website’s traffic drop (a small decline after the October core update, and a precipitous decline after the November core update), it’s possible that Google demoted the site after an AI content generation experiment.
| Ricotta Trivia | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic | 193,713 | 16,551 | -177,162 | -91.46% |
| Organic pages | 218 | 231 | 13 | 5.96% |
| Organic keywords | 83,988 | 37,640 | -46,348 | -55.18% |
| Keywords in top 3 | 3,124 | 275 | -2,849 | -91.20% |
Ricotta Trivia is a Slack add-on that offers icebreakers and team-building games. They lost an estimated 91% of their monthly organic traffic, possibly because of thin content and poor on-page experience on their blog.
Looking at the Site Structure report, 99.7% of the company’s traffic loss is isolated to the /blog subfolder:
Digging into the Organic keywords report, we can see that the website has lost hundreds of first-page rankings for high-volume keywords like get to know you questions, funny team names, and question of the day:
While these keywords seem strongly related to the company’s core business, the article content itself seems very thin—and the page is covered with intrusive advertising banners and pop-ups (a common hypothesis for why some sites were negatively impacted by recent Google updates):
The site seems to show a small recovery on the back of the August 2024 core update—so there may be hope yet.
Final thoughts
All of the data for this article comes from Ahrefs. Want to research your competitors in the same way? Check out Site Explorer.
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