Google’s Revenge and the New 4-Pack: Weekly Forum Update

Welcome back! We took a break last week but here we are again, ready to share some exciting threads from our wonderful communities!

We’ve got a little of everything this week: from the bizarre news that ISIS tried to hack Google (don’t worry, they failed… sort of) to more relevant industry tidbits about HTTPS security holes, Facebook ads, and Google’s plans for 2016.

You’re sure to find some good reading ahead!

Facebook Launches Canvas Ads For Mobile

You can get an example of what a Canvas ad looks like right in this WebmasterWorld thread. I gotta say, they’re pretty snappy.

These “rich format mobile ads for Android and iOS” were “created with input from the creative community at every step and… designed to help businesses tell stories and show products on mobile devices in a beautiful way.”

But as pretty as they are, users on WebmasterWorld seem pessimistic.

“It might be exciting for investors but users? Not so much,” writes JS_Harris. User sem4u agrees, saying “No one is going to want this in their newsfeed.” We shall see!

What Impact Has the 4-Pack of Ads Had On Your Clicks?

What impact has the 4-pack of ads had on your clicks?Click To Tweet

Searched in Google lately? Then you’ve probably noticed that the top of the SERPs are headed by not three but four ads.

Many lament the addition of more advertising in Google – but in this thread on SEO Chat, users are more interested in discussing the real impact.

“Personally, we’ve had a 10% drop in clicks through to our site,” writes mod ThomasHarvey.

User ryandiscord is seeing more positive results, though:

“For me, organic CTR has slightly improved since the 4 pack ads rolled out…What’s most noticeable is my AdWords performance. I’m getting excellent return and slightly increased ad spend.”

What’s your experience so far?

Read our own input here: What Google’s Four Ads Above the Fold Mean for Organic Search Results

Goodbye, Google Compare

Google Compare was a way that users could look at credit cards, auto insurance, mortgages, and more in a side-by-side view. It was also a way for businesses that offer those services to promote themselves.

Sadly, Google says, it “hasn’t driven the success we hoped for,” and they’ll be shutting it down. According to a Threadwatch reporter, “it rarely resulted in clicks or conversions” anyway – so will it be missed?

Google Comes Out Counter-punching!

2016 is the year that Bing, Duck Duck Go, and other competitors overtake Google! Right…?

Well, if it is, you can rest assured that Google isn’t going to sit there and take it. There are plenty of things that Google has rolled out in 2016 that indicate to some users of Cre8asiteforums that the search giant is still going strong.

There’s Google Web Light, Project Shield, and the AMP project – and over in Europe, the Digital News Initiative sounds intriguing. Visit this thread for user iamlost’s expert take on Google’s strongest offerings so far this year!

My Stars! Missing Star Reviews in Google SERPs Just a Bug

You’ve probably heard about this one already, but just in case you’re still panicking – fret not!

Mozcast saw review stars drop from 30% of SERP listings to 20%, and that caused people to wonder if the reviews were on their way out.

John Mueller has confirmed that it was just a bug, though – so it should naturally fix itself. Check out this Threadwatch post for more details!

Google Opens Up Project Shield, Anti-DDoS, To All News Sites

DDoS attacks have infamously been used by unscrupulous Internet types to censor their rivals and whatever news stories they don’t like.

“I get the impression that some of these attacks are carried out by anarchists who simply want to cause disruptions… Conceivably another category of attacks could be commercially motivated…” writes user aristotle.

Now Google is offering their anti-DDoS Shield to help Google News sites protect against them. It’s perfectly free, too.

Check out this WebmasterWorld thread for a link to Project Shield, as well as a neat site that tracks and reports on DDoS sites across the web.

ISIS Hacks the Wrong Google

ISIS thought they could use their “Cyber Caliphate Army,” hacker group to bring Google to its knees – but it seems like they didn’t do their research. Instead of Google, they wound up hacking an Indian SEO company.

To rub salt in their wounds, a second hacker group found out about it, re-hacked their work, and left a charming message for them. If you, like myself, enjoy reading about ISIS getting its butt kicked, give this one a read.

Useful SEO Tools!

Got a tool, paid or free, that you love? Looking for something new to try? The gurus of SEO Chat are sharing the tools they use every day in this thread.

So far it’s a great, curated, quickly growing list! There are tools for handling canonicals and redirects, page speed tools, alternatives to Google Analytics, and more. Check it out!

Which Older SEO Methods Should I Ignore?

The Internet has changed since 2003, and along with it so has SEO. Some people have kept up with the times, but it’s clear that a lot more are still spamming forums and blog comments.

This thread from Cre8asiteforums is trying to cut through all the noise. User EGOL writes, “Some say that SEO is all about content. Some say it’s all about links.

The important thing for the reader is to decide WHO he is going to listen to.” Meanwhile user Grumpus says that “No ‘tricks’ are ever valid.

Even so, every ‘trick’ is useful to know about so you can understand ‘why’ it worked and what the search engines were striving to achieve by letting…it work when it did.”

One Third of All HTTPS Websites Open to DROWN Attack

A DROWN attack, according to an article from The Register, “is a cross-protocol attack that can decrypt passively collected TLS sessions from up-to-date clients.” In other words, you don’t want it to happen to your site.

Users in this WebmasterWorld thread are discussing how to take preventative measures, how to know if you’ve been hit, and more.

User JS_Harris writes that, “Only mis-configured servers that still allow SSLv2 connections are vulnerable, apparently,” and goes on to say, “I apologize for sounding skeptical, we’re constantly bombarded with fear tactics designed to motivate us to adopt specific beliefs… Besides, nothing is secure if it moves data over public connections.”

So is a DROWN attack worth worrying about? That’s for you to decide – and if you want to ask questions, this thread is a good place to start.

Cheddar: The Future of Content is Video

Jon Steinberg, former president of BuzzFeed, is launching Cheddar. An article from BusinessInsider describes it as “…a CNBC for millennials…” Putting aside the fact that the word “millennial” makes my eyes twitch something fierce…is Cheddar really the future?

On Cre8asiteforums, user iamlost writes that,

“His stated business revenue model sucks. He must be hoping to get enough early traction that being bought out is easier/cheaper than competing… Unless he has some secret sauce not mentioned in the article.”

But maybe the article is at fault.

User Grumpus writes,

“Steinberg isn’t betting that THE future of internet content is video, he’s betting that HIS (successful) future of internet content is video.”

There’s a great discussion in here about Cheddar specifically, but also about the use of video on news sites. Give it a read!

UPDATE: De-Indexed and Stolen Websites

A few weeks ago, we brought you a story about a user on WebmasterWorld whose website had been de-indexed.

More than that, whoever forced the websites to be de-indexed was able to “replace” them with their own content.

Users on WebmasterWorld have been continuing the conversation. Some new users joined the forums claiming to have specific information about sites that were de-indexed and who the culprits might be.

It’s an ongoing case that only promises to get more interesting as time goes on – give it a bookmark and check in every few days!

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The post Google’s Revenge and the New 4-Pack: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

Discovering Which Sites Your Target Audience Visits - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

[Estimated read time: 8 minutes]

Identifying your target market is only one-fifth of the battle. If you want to win the proverbial war, you have to know your audience inside and out. Discovering the sites they visit and using that knowledge to your advantage is key, but the best practices to do so can feel unclear. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand outlines a five-step process to more effectively reach and market to your target community.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about finding sites that your audience visits so that you can better market to them.

Now, this is an awesome tactic to use for link building. It's great for advertising. It's great for reaching your community wherever they may go on the Web, but it's not always obvious how to go about this, and that's exactly what I want to talk you through.

Step 1 - Identify people who are part of our target audience.

So whoever it is that we are trying to reach, that we're trying to sell to, that we're trying to market to, these are people that we know perform certain kinds of searches, they visit places on the Web, they download and install apps. Whatever it is that they're doing in the digital world, we want to uncover those things, and to do so we need to start with a sample set, a small but substantive sample set of say 5 to 10 people who really match our audience's attributes. Then essentially we're just going to clone them. We're going to replicate those folks.

So assuming we start here with a little group, I've got my six fellows over here. I'm going to take out one of them and I'm going to essentially look at the attributes and characteristics of this person who's in my audience.

This is Mortimer. He's a freelance writer for the example that we'll be using this Whiteboard Friday. I'm going to assume that I'm creating a product for writers specifically. I know that Mortimer is a contributor to several different publications.

Now that I know his name and a little bit about him and what he does, title, maybe the company where he works, etc., I can look at: What are the social networks that Mortimer uses? I'm going to do a search essentially just in Google, and I'm going to look for: Where are all the places that Mortimer has profiles on the Web? From where does he share content? If he's using Twitter, by the way, this is super easy with Followerwonk, because I can go to the Followerwonk Analyze page and I can actually tap right in to see all of the content, well, the list of domains that Morty shares from most often. That's pretty cool. If he's not using Twitter, it's fine. We can do this manually, and we can just start to look at: All right, where is he sharing content from? What's he talking about, etc.? Where does he already have a profile? What networks is he using?

Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to use data that I already know about keyword research. So I take my keyword research, which I've already performed, that I know this group of people is searching for in general. I can be a little bit broader than I normally would be around very sales or conversion-focused types of keyword research. I can essentially say, "What do I know these people look for when they're looking to further their careers or their writing or their work in my area?" It doesn't have to be conversion-focused. It can be very broad.

Step 2 - Collect search results.

So I can essentially collect those search results, and then I want to find the domains that are ranking well consistently numerous times for numerous different keywords.

So I might use words like "podcast for writers," and then I'm also going to grab the related searches like "best literary podcast," "good podcast for writers" — the "I Should Be Writing podcast" is actually a related search here — or "podcast books."

Then I'm going to take those searches, line them up here as my keywords right here in the columns, and then for my rows, well, these are the domains that I found ranking consistently for these. It was MakeUseOf.com, TheWriteLife, and WritingExcuses.com. These all ranked somewhere for some of these queries, so I'm going to make a list like that.

This can actually be done pretty easily with tools. You could use your Moz exports if you're using Moz's ranking tools. You could use the same thing just to export all your ranking URLs from Searchmetrics or from GetSTAT if you're using STAT, or you could use SEMrush. Whatever ranking software you're using you can get an export. You can even do this manually. It just takes a little more time.

Step 3 - Broaden the lists.

Next up, I'm going to use some tools and some search queries to broaden these lists. So if I find that a lot of people and a lot of writers do visit Goodreads.com for obvious reasons, I can then plug that into SEMrush. From SEMrush, I can see all the keywords that they rank for and the domains that most often also rank for those keywords.

I can use SimilarWeb to essentially see similar websites. People also visit these sites. That's inside SimilarWeb Pro. I can use Google.

What I want to do is add queries like "verse," "verses," "alternatives," "sites like," "similar sites" onto the end of Goodreads or whatever the domains are that come from my lists over here. Then I will get a bunch more domains that I can plug in.

Step 4 - Survey your target audience.

The last thing I want to do to broaden this list just one more time, and to validate and verify that I've captured all the right stuff, is I might try and send out a survey to my target audience. So if I'm connected to these 6 people and hopefully 10 to 20 more at least like them, and I'm actually going to survey them and say — I really like using Typeform, I've used it a few times. If you follow me on Twitter, I've been sending some Typeform surveys lately. Looks great on mobile. I get high completion rates. So I love that software.

I might ask them, "What are your three favorite websites for freelance writing resources?" And then boom, one, two, three. Submit. Sweet.

Now, what would be even greater here is if I captured an email address because then I can reach out to those folks and say, "Hey, here are the most popular websites." Or I put up a blog post that shows what they are. Now I can go and reach out to the websites that most frequently appeared here and say, "Hey, guess what? You showed up most often in my survey, and I wrote about it." Great for networking and building a relationship and furthering a relationship.

Step 5 - Identify sites that have marketing opportunities to reach your audience.

The last step is actually the work that goes into identifying the marketing opportunity. So I know all these sites. I've got a huge list that I've now expanded and expanded again. Now I can go and look for things like an ad opportunity. On Goodreads they have an advertising platform that I can specifically use.

I can look for community discussion or commenting features. BookLikes has a system where I can set up a profile and then start commenting and contributing to their forum and their Q&A.

Bookish has a cast of characters.

This is on their About page. I can find the people behind the site, and then I can connect with them. If they all have Twitter accounts, I can follow them on Twitter. I can connect with them via LinkedIn. I could pitch them on email if I have something specific that I'd like to contribute to this site or if I'm not seeing an advertising opportunity or something else.

LitReactor had a great place where I could actually create an account and then start submitting my content just like YouMoz does for Moz.com. So those guest submission opportunities.

Basically I'm looking for anything like this, types of opportunities where I can get involved in these sites and be visible to their audiences so that I can start creating a relationship with those audiences and then hopefully earn their interest, earn their attention, earn their trust, and have them go check out whatever it is that I'm doing on my own website.

All right everyone. I look forward to your suggestions and ideas, as well as any cool tools or processes you use, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Hardware Upgrade and the Effect on the Historic Index

Majestic is upgrading its back end to be able to create better scale moving forward. This is a good thing in the long run, but the change is taking longer than expected and so we want to share what is happening. You may have noticed, our usual monthly Historic Index release has slipped this month.…

The post Hardware Upgrade and the Effect on the Historic Index appeared first on Majestic Blog.

#SEJThinkTank Recap: Visual Marketing in 2016 and Why You Still Need it (More Than Ever) by @megcabrera

On Wednesday, March 2nd, the SEJ ThinkTank was joined by Nemanja Darijevic, Creative and Development Director of Pixel Road Designs, to talk about visual marketing in 2016. This hour-long webinar was moderated by our own Loren Baker and included a short Q&A session at the end. During this webinar, Nemanja’s discusses: How to Rise Above the Advertising Clutter Studies show our brain retains 65% of visual images they see, and we only have 50 milliseconds to get your audience’s attention. That is why visual marketing is so vital. Nemanja said there’s too much advertising noise clamoring for our audience’s attention, so the challenge […]

The post #SEJThinkTank Recap: Visual Marketing in 2016 and Why You Still Need it (More Than Ever) by @megcabrera appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Eye Tracking in 2016: How Searchers Interact with Mobile SERPs vs. Desktop

Posted by rMaynes1

[Estimated read time: 8 minutes]

In 2014, Mediative released an eye-tracking study that looked at how Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) has changed over the last decade, and how searcher behavior has adapted as a result. We learned that:

1. Top organic results are no longer always in the top-left corner, so users look elsewhere to find them.


2. Mobile devices have habitually conditioned searchers to scan vertically more than horizontally. Searchers are looking for the fastest path to the desired content.


3. People are viewing more search results listings during a single session and spending less time viewing each one.


4. Businesses that are positioned lower on the SERP (especially positions 2–4) see more click activity than they did several years ago, making this real estate much more valuable.


5. The #1 organic listing still captures the most click activity (32.8%), regardless of what new elements are presented.

On a desktop, the #1 organic listing is shifting further down the page, opening up the top of the page with more potential areas for businesses to achieve visibility.

The way website listings are presented on a mobile search engine results page is significantly different from how they're presented on a desktop. The decrease in available screen size means there are a limited number of listings immediately visible to searchers, and competition for the top spots can be fierce.

The 2016 eye-tracking study

In this latest eye-tracking study, Mediative took 49 participants of mixed age and gender, asking them to complete 41 search tasks on an iPhone 5 using Google. We used the X2-60 Tobii mobile device eye tracker to track where they looked on the screen, measuring time to first look, how many participants looked, and how many participants clicked on each listing.

The Tobii X2-60

An example of one of the tasks we asked? "You’re interested in taking a vacation to New Orleans. Use Google to find cheap flights from Toronto to New Orleans." Participants were shown the mobile SERP below:

The area highlighted in the image above shows what's viewable on the mobile screen, before scrolling is necessary.

Ultimately, we wanted to know:

1. Where on the mobile SERP do searchers look and click the most? How does this differ from desktop searchers?

2. How important is the location of a listing on the SERP to win views and clicks from searchers?

3. Does the need for scrolling negatively or positively impact the views and clicks that listings further down the page receive?

4. What can advertisers do to ensure their Google listings are seen and clicked on a mobile SERP?

Key findings:

1. The #1 organic listing still captures the most click activity; it just takes 87% longer for it to be first seen on a mobile compared to a desktop.

In cases such as the one shown below, the knowledge panel that appears to the right of the results on a desktop (left image) becomes a key feature at the top of the mobile SERP (right image). Searchers have to scroll in order to see the organic listings that can be seen without scrolling on a desktop. This didn’t deter searchers from seeking out the top organic listing, however — it just took longer.

Takeaway:

The relevancy of your listing to the searcher's intent becomes more important than ever as it’s taking longer for people to first lay eyes on the organic listing. This provides more of an opportunity for them to be distracted by other brands and features on the SERP that appear before the organic listings.

2. Only 7.4% of clicks were below the 4th organic listing versus 16% on a desktop, and only 62.9% of tasks resulted in a scroll-down.

Takeaway:

Being above the 4th organic listing — whether in an organic, local, knowledge graph, paid position, etc — is critical. Fewer and fewer clicks are going to listings below the top 4 organic listings, leaving less opportunity for advertisers to drive traffic to their sites.

Mobile SEO needs to be taken extremely seriously. However, many businesses don't realize the importance of optimizing their sites specifically for mobile, resulting in ranking lower on a mobile than on a desktop.

• Invest in putting as much relevant content into your SERP listing and use available tools such as Schema to ensure that your listing stands out on the screen, increasing the likelihood of capturing clicks.


• Take advantage of the fact that other elements are presented above the organic listings, where over 35% of the page clicks on mobile were won.


• Track mobile rankings separately so as to optimize specifically for mobile, depending on the results that are seen.

Tips to rank higher in the mobile SERPs:

• If you have an app, ensure it's indexed. More and more, apps are going to be competing with websites for rankings and traffic.


• Remember you're dealing with a reduced space, so ensure your most important information is at the very beginning of page titles and descriptions, including priority keywords in the body of the website content.


• Websites with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) might result in higher rankings. Although not confirmed by Google, the company did reiterate the importance of page speed and the need to improve page load times, of which AMP is one way to achieve this.

3. 11% more clicks went to the knowledge graph on a mobile phone compared to a desktop, and almost 22% less clicks went to the top #1 organic listing on a mobile compared to a desktop.

A heat map showing the views captured by a knowledge graph result on a mobile phone. The displayed knowledge graph is shown to the right.

The introduction of more elements at the top of the page requires significant scrolling before the lower organic listings are reached, and these additional elements took a portion of clicks away from the top organic listings in that time.

When we studied mobile SERPS that only included organic listings, we found that:

• 99% of people looked at the top organic listing vs. 83% on a desktop


• 40% of page clicks were to the top organic listing vs. 34% on a desktop


• 75% of page clicks were to the top 4 organic listings vs. 60% on a desktop

When we studied mobile SERPS that also included paid listings, local listings, a knowledge graph, etc, we found that:

• 78.5% of people looked at the top organic listing vs. 99% on organic-only pages


• 33.2% of page clicks were to the top organic listing vs. 40% on organic-only pages


• 57% of page clicks were to the top 4 organic listings vs. 75% on organic-only pages

Takeaway:

Features on the mobile SERP such as the knowledge graph results have the potential to capture a significant amount of attention away from the organic listings. The major difference between a knowledge graph on a desktop versus a mobile phone is that scrolling is required on a phone to see organic listings. Once again, the importance of a strong mobile SEO strategy cannot be understated. If you find your organic listing is losing too many clicks to the knowledge graph, find other keywords that don't produce the knowledge graph and include them in your optimization strategy.

4. The top sponsored ad is seen by 91% of searchers.

Takeaway:

Mobile screen real estate is extremely valuable. You have two ways to try and earn as much of that real estate as you can: paid search and mobile SEO. Although paid search can't guarantee that you'll always appear at the top of the results, a good paid search campaign can definitely help capture more clicks.

Consider paid text ads if you’re looking to improve website traffic, or optimize for local searches if appropriate, rather than focusing all efforts on ranking #1 in the organic listings. As three paid ads on mobile become more common, brands must be prepared to see a drop in traffic from organic listings, and perhaps consider increasing their investments in paid search.

5. 19.2% of page clicks on average went to the top 2 sponsored text ads, compared to 14.5% on a desktop.

Takeaway:

Paid search represents a bigger opportunity for traffic to your site on a mobile compared to desktop, especially if ad extensions are present.

Tips for using paid search ad extensions to push organic listings from view:

• Location extensions ensure the business address is shown alongside the ad.


• Call extensions add the ability to call the business directly from the paid ad.


• App extensions show a link below the ad text that allows people to download your app


• Site link extensions add links to various website pages from within the ad.


• Call-out extensions add descriptive text to your ad to describe more about what you do or offer.

6. 47% more clicks went to the map and local listings when they were above the organic listings.

Takeaway:

The positioning of the local listings, whether below or above the organic listings, can have a significant impact on the views and clicks captured by each of the local listings or the organic listings. With only three local listings appearing on mobile, it’s important for your business to be there, especially if your website is struggling to rank in the top 4 organic listings.

Tips to rank in the local listings and capture more clicks:

• Have a complete and accurate Google+ page for every location. Focus on the number of citations and NAP accuracy across third-party sites and local directories.


• Get reviews! The stars in the listing only appear once 5 reviews have been generated


• Ensure your site is full of locally relevant, useful content, with plenty of local keywords used throughout

Measure more than just clicks. Clicks to a local listing from a mobile device can result in a reduction in traffic to the brand's website, as the local listings link to the Local Finder. It's therefore important to measure impression data from local listings as well as traffic to business Google+ pages, as this can contribute to driving traffic to local stores and businesses.

To conclude

There’s no doubt about it: being listed at the top of the SERP is critical on a mobile device. People may scroll up and down, but ultimately, with over 92% of clicks going to an area above the 4th organic listing, if your business listing is below that, you’re almost invisible on a mobile search. Mobile must be taken seriously, but there are still far too many businesses that don't see that importance and are still focusing all their efforts on desktop.

To discover out more takeaways and tips, plus average click-through rates per SERP element, download the full study on our site!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Need Help With AMP? Google is Rolling Out New International Office Hours

Google is continuing its prioritization of AMP adoption with the rollout of new international office hours.

The post Need Help With AMP? Google is Rolling Out New International Office Hours appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Tweeting & Politics: Are the Same Candidates Winning at the Polls Winning on Twitter?

Posted by angelacherry

[Estimated read time: 7 minutes]

Much has happened since we last posted about what Twitter can teach us about the US presidential candidates. In the past three weeks, an additional 15 states have participated in electoral contests to help narrow the field of candidates who will ultimately secure the Republican and Democratic party nominations for president.

With so much activity happening offline, we were due for an update of the latest and greatest activity happening online on our beloved Twitter! As with our previous post, we’re putting our Twitter analytics tool, Followerwonk, to work analyzing the top presidential candidates. This includes tracking changes in followership, analyzing conversations and engagement, and other interesting insights we uncover on this journey. You can also follow the data we’re tracking for the current five top-performing candidates* in realtime by visiting their individual Followerwonk analysis report pages:

• Hillary Clinton


• Ted Cruz


• Marco Rubio


• Bernie Sanders


• Donald Trump

*Top-performing candidates as measured by their finishing positions in the most recent electoral contests. This list will evolve with the election cycle.

What’s happened since we last checked in?

In our first post, we examined Twitter trends around the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary. Since then, Nevada and South Carolina hosted contests in the second half of February, and most notably, yesterday was the BIG ONE: Super Tuesday.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Super Tuesday, it marks the single biggest day for casting ballots in the 2016 US presidential race until the general election in November. Voters in 12 states cast ballots with a significant number of delegates at stake: 595 for Republicans across 11 contests, and 865 for Democrats across 12 contests.

Now that we’re all caught up, let’s dig in!

Cloudy with a chance of Trump

We wanted to know what the Twitterverse had to say about the candidates during the electoral contests in Nevada and South Carolina. To capture this, we created a series of word clouds representing the most common words associated with tweets and retweets mentioning each candidate during the 48 hours surrounding the contests.

You’ll see that each candidate’s word cloud contains popular words and slogans from their respective campaigns, such as:

• "cruzcrew" for Cruz


• "marcomentum" for Rubio


• "makeamericagreatagain" for Trump


• "imwithher" for Clinton


• "feelthebern" for Sanders

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the one word surfacing in every single word cloud: "Trump." And while it makes an appearance in each of the five candidate’s word clouds, it’s especially significant in those of his GOP rivals.

Word clouds for the top 5 candidates during the Nevada Caucus.

Word clouds for the top 5 candidates during the South Carolina primary.

What’s in a name?

Given Trump’s broad name recognition, his prevalence may not seem surprising. That is, until you consider that according to a recent Gallup survey, there is one candidate with slightly higher name recognition (Clinton) who did not achieve the same distinction. In addition, the most recent measurement of media coverage per candidate conducted by the FiveThirtyEight blog uncovered that while Trump received 54 percent of the GOP primary media coverage, Clinton received 77 percent of the Democratic primary media coverage.

Furthermore, at this stage in the primaries, both Trump and Clinton are considered the front-runners to win their party’s nominations, according to the latest news analysis from the Chicago Tribune and ABC News, among others.

So what gives?

If we had to speculate about the reason Trump is so prominent across the candidate word clouds — and to be clear, we are speculating — it's likely the same reason he’s so prominent in our current political discourse: the American public is fascinated by his meteoric rise as a politician. It’s expected that someone like Clinton, who has built a long political career, would hit these milestones, but perhaps unexpected that a businessman and reality TV star would do the same. Twitter is ultimately reflection of the world around it, after all.

Tweeting up a storm

As we did with the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary, we explored which states’ residents were actively tweeting during the 48-hour period surrounding the most recent electoral contests.

Once again, residents of the US capital, Washington, DC, swept the top spot across all contests.

We also found that Nevadans were highly engaged, ranking in the top 10 states tweeting about each candidate across both the Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primaries.

The top states tweeting during the Nevada and South Carolina contests in February also offered a glimpse of the anticipation felt in a few Super Tuesday states. Most notably was Alaska, which took a top 10 spot for 70% of the pre-Super Tuesday candidate cards, as well as Texas and Vermont, which took top 10 spots on 40% of the pre-Super Tuesday candidate cards. And not wanting to be left out of the ongoing Twitter discussion, New Hampshire residents remained active in the two electoral contests that followed their own, with that state taking a top 10 spot on 60% of the pre-Super Tuesday candidate cards.

Top states tweeting about the top 5 candidates during the Nevada caucus.

Top states tweeting about the top 5 candidates during the South Carolina primary.

An examination of the most active states tweeting on Super Tuesday reveals a few interesting findings, particularly for the geolocation of people tweeting about Clinton. For instance, despite winning the Minnesota caucus, Minnesota does not appear in Sanders’s top 10 Super Tuesday rankings, but it does appear on Clinton’s list. In addition, despite sweeping the primary contests in the South, no southern state ranked on Clinton’s top 10 list. On top of that, Clinton is the only one of the five candidates to not have her home state (Arkansas) rank in her top 10 list, whereas the other candidates had their respective home states make appearances in their top 10 lists. It’s worth noting though that New York, a state for which she served as senator, does appear on Clinton’s list.

Top states tweeting about the top 5 candidates during Super Tuesday.

Who’s winning the follower race?

We know which states are doing the most tweeting, but what about which candidate is winning the race for followers? It depends on how you look at it.

If you look at sheer quantity of followers, the rankings are as follows:

1. Trump: 6 million+ followers


2. Clinton: 5.3 million+ followers


3. Sanders: 1.3 million+ followers


4. Rubio: 1.1 million+ followers


5. Cruz: 782,000+ followers

Number of Trump followers as of February 29, 2016

However, if you look at net gains in followers over the past several weeks, it’s a different picture.* We decided to take this view because it takes into account the fact that some of the candidates were much more well-known prior to announcing their candidacy. We began tracking each of the candidates on Twitter on January 14, 2016, a couple of weeks prior to the Iowa Caucus. If you look at the percentage gain in net followers since mid-January, the ranking shifts to:

1. Sanders: 34.29 percent (gain of about 391,000 followers)


2. Cruz: 21.78 percent (gain of about 154,700 followers)


3. Rubio: 19.16 percent (gain of about 203,000 followers)


4. Trump: 14.55 percent (gain of about 826,000 followers)


5. Clinton: 7.99 percent (gain of about 408,700 followers)

Net gain of followers for Sanders since mid-January, as of February 29, 2016.

*Wondering what's up with the flat line on February 21? It represents one in only a small handful of times where our social graph fetching hit a snag and failed to accurately capture the total number of followers that day. We're bummed it happened, but rest assured it was fixed by February 22.

Shifting winds impacting followership

It’s also fun to drill down into certain moments in time to understand how changes in followership fluctuate throughout the campaign cycle.

For example, the GOP debate on February 25, 2016 marked a major shift in tone from Rubio toward Trump. Much of the news analysis the following day, including this piece from the The Hill and this one from CNN, noted that Rubio was far more critical of Trump than he’s been in previous debates. Sure enough, if you look at trends in followership for Rubio, apart from the dates of electoral contests, he experienced his biggest spike within the 24-hour period surrounding that debate, gaining about 15,000 new followers.

Change in followership for Rubio from January 31–February 29, 2016

Not to be outdone, the very next day on February 26, 2016, Trump experienced a decent bump himself, collecting about 44,000 new followers on the day Governor Chris Christie endorsed him for the presidency.

Until next time...

Keep checking back in with the Moz Blog and Followerwonk on Twitter between now and the general election in November, where we’ll keep you posted on our latest analysis and findings of all things presidential on Twitter.

We’d also love to hear from you in the comments if you have any insights to share from issues or candidates you track on Twitter, or areas you’d like to see us explore in future posts. Don’t be shy!

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