July 25, 2017
You voted. We researched. The final list is ready.
Every summer, we release our newest edition of the Top 25—it’s a nice way to honor some of the hardest workers in our tight-knit PPC community. The most crazy/awesome thing about the voting this year? We had over 17,000 votes!
Yes, 17,000! It was an epic battle almost as good as anything you’d see on Game of Thrones (almost….).
We also included the Top Rising Stars in PPC again this year. We asked our readers to submit the names of PPCers just starting to burst onto the scene and destined to become an influencer. Some of last year’s “Rising Stars” made it onto the Top 25 list this year!
Though we had a LOT of votes, that is only one part of the complex formula that goes into calculating what makes someone truly influential in our industry. We’ll go into more detail describing how we arrived at the rankings, but the quick and dirty version is: We measured Vote Totals, Social Impact, and Traditional Influence (like Speaking Engagements and Blog Writing) for each person that received a vote. The scores took into account only what someone has done within the last year to truly stay up-to-date as an influential expert.
You’ll notice that there’s quite a few that moved up in rank this year, a couple that have dropped off, and some new faces that have never made the list before! The competition for being one of the most influential experts in the PPC industry is as always, a fierce one!
Also, last year we tried something new. In past years, we’ve deemed employees of Hanapin, the creators, owners, and writers of PPC Hero, not eligible for this list. Last year, we decided to go ahead and score any of our employees that received votes (by the readers of course!) like any other candidate and decided to do that again this year. You’ll see the employees included as our “Honorable Mentions.”
Alright, who’s ready to see the list???
The Official 2017 Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts
The Results
Like last year, we gave readers complete freedom to write in who they thought were influential experts (and rising stars!). We, of course, saw the usual suspects, but were also introduced to some new folks on the scene, both in the US and throughout the world.
We also want to point out that if an expert didn’t get voted in, they weren’t included in the process for rankings. So if you think you should be considered for this list, make sure you’re telling your co-workers and friends to vote you in! We also stay mindful in limiting the list to purely PPC experts.
The Methodology
All metrics are normalized into a standard scale so that they can be compared and tallied using the same rubric. Some of the measurements we list below sound a little like apples and oranges, but we used a weighting and normalization scheme specifically to ensure that no single thing created a bias for any particular PPC expert.
The metrics we measured can be roughly defined as belonging to three categories:
- Traditional Influence
Speaking engagements, books, blog posts, webinars, podcasts (both frequency and variety of sites/conferences), etc. - Social Impact
Influence measurement using tools like Moz’s awesome Social Authority metric. - Vote Totals
The votes, nominations and enthusiasm of you, the PPC community!
All metrics were based on what the individual has done within the past year (June 2016 – May 2017). If they wrote a book in September 2016, they got extra points for that, but if the last time they wrote a book was in February 2013, no extra points were added. The same went for speaking engagements and blog posts. We felt this truly measured the impact of an influencer, by making sure all efforts were up-to-date and we weren’t accounting for activities that had taken place more than two years ago.
There is plenty of room for debate (we have certainly learned that much), but we always do our very best to ensure that the scores are objective and that they rely on actual data, not opinion. The list is crafted from a 1:1 comparison of the numbers in our formula, and nothing more.
The Reaction
We want to hear from you!
Love the list? Tell your friends! Hate the list? Tell your friends! But most importantly: Tell us.
Tweet @PPCHero with your thoughts, feelings and emotions. We want to hear it all!
Past Top 25 Lists:
The Top 25 PPC Experts of 2016
The Top 25 PPC Experts of 2015
The Top 25 PPC Experts of 2014
The Top 25 CRO Experts of 2014
The Top 25 PPC Experts of 2013
The Top 25 PPC Experts of 2012
Do PPC Experts Even Exist?
Should Every PPC Expert Know CRO?