Latest / Sharp Strategies Sweet Success / First Live! Understanding Domain Ratings and Authority Scores

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First Live! Understanding Domain Ratings and Authority Scores · Sharp Strategies Sweet Success

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  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it looks like we're live now.
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  SPEAKER_00: So clock is ticking.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're in here and you're watching me today, I really appreciate it.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is again, unannounced.
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  I am testing out the live video feature here on Substack because
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  it was recommended
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  SPEAKER_00: to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I am going to start doing these lives twice per week.
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  SPEAKER_00: They'll probably be pretty short.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking like 10 to 15 minutes.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we're just, I'm playing it by ear.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's often how I kind of figure these things out.
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  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for being with me here today.
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  SPEAKER_00: I do see we have a few people hopping in.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it makes me a little bit nervous.
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  SPEAKER_00: I believe this will be recorded later.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I'll be able to share it and you'll be able to rewatch it.
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  SPEAKER_00: For this short live,
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  SPEAKER_00: the short test live,
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  I'm going to briefly touch on the topic of domain authority or
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  authority scores.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because this question came up today with one of my clients,
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  because I use primarily Ahrefs currently to get a quick score
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  of a law firm's
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  SPEAKER_00: website and see what their authority score is,
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  SPEAKER_00: how much traffic they're getting,
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  SPEAKER_00: which keywords they're ranking for.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I use Ahrefs,
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  SPEAKER_00: which has its own proprietary system for generating a domain rating,
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  SPEAKER_00: I believe is what they call it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's important to keep in mind that all of these tools,
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  SPEAKER_00: Ahrefs,
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  SPEAKER_00: SEMrush,
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  SPEAKER_00: Moz,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there are a few others that I'm not thinking of,
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  have their own proprietary tools and systems for generating the
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  scores in their dashboards.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so in Ahrefs,
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  SPEAKER_00: a domain rating for a website might be eight,
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  SPEAKER_00: where SEMrush gives it an authority score,
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  SPEAKER_00: their version of the domain rating a 23.
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  And so what's always important to keep in mind with these
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  scores is they just
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  represent what each of those platforms believes is important in
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  determining
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  SPEAKER_00: authority score or domain ranking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Effectively,
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  SPEAKER_00: all these tools are just trying to figure out,
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  SPEAKER_00: like,
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  SPEAKER_00: how does Google determine how authoritative a site is?
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  And that's,
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  you know,
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  they build their authority score,
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  domain rating,
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  whatever.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then they sell subscriptions to their platform,
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  and you can see what your website's domain rating authority
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  score is on these
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  SPEAKER_00: tools,
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  SPEAKER_00: right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it's proprietary and it's a guess.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like none of these platforms know like this is what Google is looking at.
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  And so what matters more than like the number and how high it
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  is and how low it is,
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  SPEAKER_00: is how it compares to your competitors.
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  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you,
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  SPEAKER_00: whatever tool you have,
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  SPEAKER_00: Ahrefs,
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  SPEAKER_00: SEMrush,
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  SPEAKER_00: open it up,
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  SPEAKER_00: look at your domain domain.
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  rating your domain and authority score,
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  then check that against your next biggest competitor.
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  And then you can compare authority scores and see what's the
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  delta between us and
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  SPEAKER_00: our competitor and use that to help make your decisions.
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  Like,
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  are the strategies we're using to enhance our authority online
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  working?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes or no?
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  And that's the other part of it that we have to keep in mind is
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  we use these scores
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  SPEAKER_00: to assess our performance on a continuum.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if we hire an SEO company in July 2025,
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  SPEAKER_00: we want and they start doing whatever they're doing with our website.
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  SPEAKER_00: We want to use the domain rating to see like,
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  SPEAKER_00: how does that change between July 2025 and February 2026?
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  SPEAKER_00: Is there an increase?
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  Then it's possible what the SEO company is doing is working or
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  something on the
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  SPEAKER_00: marketing team is doing or working.
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  But I think this is where we need to start getting specific
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  about what we're doing
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  SPEAKER_00: and what tools we're using to measure also.
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  SPEAKER_00: I recently found out,
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  SPEAKER_00: kind of preparing for this live and answering my own questions,
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  that Ahrefs develops their domain rating score primarily based
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  on your backlink
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  SPEAKER_00: profile.
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  SPEAKER_00: where SEMrush combines your backlink profile,
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  SPEAKER_00: behavior metrics,
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  SPEAKER_00: like how people navigate through your site,
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  SPEAKER_00: how they use your site,
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  SPEAKER_00: and also your keyword rankings,
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  SPEAKER_00: your organic visibility.
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  So apparently SEMrush has more factors that go into the
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  authority score it assigns
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  SPEAKER_00: your business.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whereas like Ahrefs is mostly based on backlinks.
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  So if you,
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  let's say you hire an SEO company and say,
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  we want you to rebuild our website.
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  SPEAKER_00: We want you to update our pages.
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  SPEAKER_00: We want you to write new pages, improve internal linking, all that stuff.
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  We want you to do a whole bunch of work,
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  but we want you to do it on our site.
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  SPEAKER_00: Don't do backlinks.
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  SPEAKER_00: We give up backlinks.
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  And if you're using Ahrefs to track your domain rating or
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  authority score,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is mostly backlink based,
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  then you're probably not going to see much movement in your
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  Ahrefs score as the SEO
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  SPEAKER_00: company works on your site.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so it's interesting to think about.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you tell an SEO company,
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  SPEAKER_00: we'll do everything except backlinks,
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  and then you monitor them with a tool that primarily assesses
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  domain rating based
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  SPEAKER_00: on your backlink profile,
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  SPEAKER_00: there's a mismatch there.
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  And you're probably not going to give the SEO company credits
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  proper credit for the
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  SPEAKER_00: improvements they made for your site.
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  SPEAKER_00: Of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: though,
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  SEO companies will also have a variety of these tracking tools
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  that they use and
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  SPEAKER_00: compare sites and compare domain ratings.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they'll probably come prepared with information.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, hey, this is what SEMrush says.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ahrefs doesn't show much movement,
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  SPEAKER_00: but,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: here's all this growth happening in your authority score on SEMrush.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for this live, I primarily just talked about those two tools.
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  SPEAKER_00: I also like to use Bright Local,
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  SPEAKER_00: which doesn't really have an authority score,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I really like their local search grid.
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  SPEAKER_00: But again, like these other tools, Bright Local is
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  SPEAKER_00: uses a proprietary,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: method of querying data search API to determine what your local grid,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: looks like.
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  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, you know, I don't know if I can use a visual here.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll have to print stuff out and like hold it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_00: But,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  I'm talking about when an SEO company shows you a map with all
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  these like orange,
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  SPEAKER_00: red or green dots on it,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: one,
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  SPEAKER_00: two,
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  SPEAKER_00: three,
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  10 plus to show you like how you how your business ranks in the
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  local map pack.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm talking about.
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  So Bright Local has its own proprietary system for querying
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  Google's API to get
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  SPEAKER_00: back that data on how your business ranks.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what's interesting is it's also time-dependent.
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  You could run that same report back-to-back and see minor
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  variations in the score,
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  but
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  SPEAKER_00: Or if you run them at different times of the day,
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  you'll see huge variations in the score in terms of like how
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  your business ranks.
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  And sometimes like in a period where people are searching for
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  attorneys less,
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  like during holiday seasons or back to school periods when we
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  normally expect to
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  SPEAKER_00: see like lead slowdowns.
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  If you're suddenly see that you're ranking well over like the
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  Thanksgiving holiday
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  SPEAKER_00: or the Christmas holiday,
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  SPEAKER_00: your score shoot to one.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's actually maybe because the search traffic has decreased.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's just that's just a trend I've noticed, like how you rank.
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  SPEAKER_00: can vary depending on how much search traffic there is overall.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if anyone has more information on that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have to continue to do some research.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I'm keeping this.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a live session short.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you weren't here at the very beginning,
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  SPEAKER_00: this is my very first test Substack live session.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm actually going to come back online on,
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  SPEAKER_00: let me check my calendar,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I think Monday I'm going to do a second live session.
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  Actually,
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  let me pull up my calendar to give everyone a firm time and
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  date.
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  So,
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  yeah,
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  on President's Day at 3 p.m.,
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  I'm going to come on here,
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  do another live broadcast.
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  I am doing a deep dive into the announcement for ChatGPT ads
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  this weekend.
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  SPEAKER_00: I talked to a few SEO companies this week about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And...
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  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you right now, like it's not live yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're not showing ads yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe anyone is,
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  but it's announced and there's a business manager account that
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  you can create for
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  SPEAKER_00: yourself and your business.
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  So I'm going to spend the weekend reading up on it,
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  getting what information I can.
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  I'll come on here and do another live broadcast and share what
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  I know about Chow2PT ads and how
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  SPEAKER_00: law firms could potentially use them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all so much,
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  SPEAKER_00: my tiny group of people who showed up to this unannounced Substack Live,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I will see you guys on Monday.
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  SPEAKER_00: Bye.