Ahrefs’ Digest #215: Fastest growing companies, high agency, and more

Welcome to a new edition of the Ahrefs’ Digest.

Here's our meme of the week:



By the way, the Ahrefs Certification is almost here. Want to be among the first to try it out?

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Quick search marketing news

• Google is testing a new local search feature: "Places people are talking about."

• Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai says 2025 will be about making AI apps like Gemini the point of contact between users and search.

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Best of the week

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.

[X] High Agency Vs. Competency: Great discussion on how high agency doesn’t necessarily lead to competency. You can do many things but not learn from them.

What is the Percentage of Bot Traffic on the Web?: According to Cloudflare Radar, bot traffic consistently accounts for about 30% of total web traffic. (Which is lower than expected.) Is that a good or bad thing? Are we doing enough to minimize unnecessary bot activity?

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Latest from our podcast

This week’s podcast guest is Madhav Bhandari, Head of Marketing at Storylane.

• Why did Madhav choose $5-$15M ARR as his sweet spot

• CEO<>CMO fit - how do you know if you have one

• How to earn your CEO's trust and how long that might take

• How to use employee advocacy in marketing

• The benefits of a founder brand and when it needs to evolve into a company brand

• How Storylane engages with their community and how that helps with brand awareness

• What "demo-led" SEO is and how they used it to 10x their search traffic (and outrank Ahrefs)

Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

See you next week,
Si Quan

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