15 years ago today was the first time I wrote a blog post on this site, the Search Engine Roundtable. Since then I have continued to write daily, almost without any time off, every single day of the work week. It is a passion I had no clue would last for 15 years, but I continue to love doing on a daily basis.

I say this every year, but I am so happy to say the original purpose behind the site has not changed since day one. I still cover the search industry, what they are talking about, and try my best to catalog that history on this site. Covering what the SEOs and SEMs are chatting about in forums or on social media, I think, helps everyone in the community see what is on top of mind within the community. Be it Google algorithm updates, new advancements in voice search, AI, paid search and so much more – I hope that you can find what you need here on a daily basis. In short, what is covered here is simply what you, the industry, is talking about on a daily basis – this site just brings more awareness to that.

I still average about five stories per day here, that does not include what I write at Search Engine Land. I rarely take off any days and when I do for religious reasons, I try to schedule stories for those days. Consistency is very important to me and in everything I do – thus most people know they can find fresh new stories here every Monday through Friday between the hours of 7am and 8:30am EDT. Over the years I’ve tried to get more creative with my story images, heck, I’ve been using more animated GIFs there as well. I keep my weekly SEO video on Fridays, I post my daily search picture and I try to never miss the monthly Google webmaster reports.

This year was an espesially humbling year for me – I was some how awarded the US Search Personality of the Year award. I suspect it had to do with the tough year the industry had in general with losing so many people we love. I don’t want to get into all of the sad that happened this year, but overall – we have amazing people in our industry and they deserve a thank you.

You can read my 14 year recap also if you would like.

Our Growth & Analytics:

While last year our traffic was up over 12%, this past year it was up over 15% year over year. Organic search traffic grew 10% year over year, referral traffic was up 11%, direct traffic over 35% up, and social media was up 9%. Our mobile traffic is about 40% of our visits with 60% still being desktop, that didn’t change much from last year. Also our US traffic was up 30% this year, which is very interesting to see.

There are now about 27,000 stories on this site, which about 24,000 of them I wrote myself. In the past year, I posted over 1,850 stories, with over 11,000 non-spam related comments in a year. Keep posting those comments, I did make an effort to remove more of the abusive comments this year, which is why comments are down from the previous year. I will keep trying to be better with comment moderation.

The YouTube channel has gained 1,500 new subscribers – please do subscribe – I wish more people watched my 10 minute weekly recaps. The videos in total have just about 6 million views, with 1.7 million minutes of watch time. The good news is the YouTube revenue about doubled last year – we made $403 in YouTube earnings. 🙂

Most Important Stories In Past 12 Months:

Like every year, it is tough saying which stories are the most important stories each year. It depends on you – were you impacted by a specific algorithm update, did a new Google Ads feature play an important role in some insane conversion metrics for you, did new voice schema propel your business into the Google Home device or maybe it was something else. But I’ll give it a crack:
Google Home Hub – Google Assistant With A Display
The Google Home Page Now Has Discover Feed
Google Really Launches Zero Search Results For Time, Conversions & Math
Google Speed Update: Google Algorithm Designed To Downgrade Slow Mobile Pages
Google Confirms Search Ranking Updates But Calls Them Minor & Many
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update: The Maccabees Update
Google Maccabees Update Analysis: Sites Targeting Many Keyword Permutations
Google Medic Update: Google’s Core Search Update Had Big Impact On Health/Medical Sites
Google Search Algorithm August 1st Update Rolling Out Now – Core Broad Update
Google Halloween Ranking Update: Possible Targeted Update Yesterday?
Google Birthday Update: Google Confirms Small Algorithm Update On September 27th
New Google Search Console Is Rolling Out With 16 Months Of Data
Search Console Search Analytics API Gets 16 Months Of Data
Google Search Console Reports Removes Anonymous Queries
Bing To Invest In Bing Webmaster Tools
Google: We Changed Request Indexing Limits & Quotas Over Spam & Abuse
Google FAQ, Q&A and How-To Snippets Requires Schema
Google Trends Updated: SEOs/SEMs Should Check It Out
Google Speakable Annotations With Structured Data For Publishers
Google Updated Quality Raters Guidelines On July 20th
Google Assistant & Voice Search Guidelines
Google Finally Updates The SEO Starter Guide After Several Years
Google Clarifies Seven Points On Mobile-First Indexing After Much Confusion
Google Mobile First Index Expanding Within Next Several Weeks
New Google Multifaceted Featured Snippets Focuses On Multi-Intent Queries
Bing Multi-Perspective Answers – Like Two Featured Snippets
Bing Finally Adds AMP To Search Results
Google Images Algorithm Now Uses Page Authority & Image Placement On A Page
Google Image Search Desktop Redesign Officially Rolls Out
Google: Personalized Search Results Is “Very Light”
Google Report: We Reduced Link Spam By Almost Half
Google Topic Layer To Knowledge Graph, Enabling Dynamic Categorization & More
Google+ Is Shutting Down: How Will It Impact SEOs?
Eric Schmidt To Step Down As Executive Chairman At Google & Alphabet
New Google Search Liaison Twitter Account From Danny Sullivan
Google’s 20th Birthday Logo Remembers Popular Searches

Most Viewed Stories In Past 12 Months:

Here are the most viewed stories in the past 12 months of 2018 based on Google Analytics. I should note that my analytics does not combine AMP URLs with the canonical non AMP URL:
Google Search Algorithm August 1st Update Rolling Out Now – Core Broad Update
Google Medic Update: Google’s Core Search Update Had Big Impact On Health/Medical Sites
The Google Project Beacon – Did You Get Your Beacon?
Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update: The Maccabees Update
Google Maccabees Update Analysis: Sites Targeting Many Keyword Permutations
December Global Festivities: Google Kicks Off Year End Holiday Doodles
December Global Festivities: Some Upset Google Doesn’t Say Merry Christmas
Google PageSpeed Insights Unavailable Message
Google: Don’t Change URLs When Replacing Old Content With New Content
Google Birthday Update: Google Confirms Small Algorithm Update On September 27th

Looking Forward To 2019:

Let’s forget about mobile – that was so the past few years. AMP also, that was 2017 and 2018.

The future is really about voice search and voice assistants. Google Home devices, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana – but clearly Google is the big player here. How to get your content in featured snippets, getting your videos in the Google Home Hub display, using speakable markup and so much more. Structured data, was important the past few years and is ever more important here. You want your phone, your computer, your car, and your microwave to give you results from your web site – when relevant. And by voice I mean not just reading the answers but showing you the answers if there is a display on your assistant device.

So I would double down on figuring out voice assistants, with a focus on Google Assistant and Google Home devices.

I deeply appreciate and thank you all so much for reading every day, commenting (or ignoring the comments) and for sharing the stories here. Keep up the chatter and let’s build an even better search community this coming year.

Deepest respect,

Barry Schwartz