May 29, 2018
The final list is ready. Are you 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. This year, we had over 25,000 votes!
BEFORE YOU SCROLL DOWN, READ THIS FIRST!
While we love the vast amount of participation we receive for this competition, it came to our attention that not everyone was competing fairly. Certain participants have tried to “stuff the ballot box” with votes not cast by real people. Votes certainly aren’t the only thing calculated in a person’s ranking, but it does make a difference for scores, particularly when people score the same in other categories besides the voting rank. As a result, some people’s actual influence was skewed.
As a company, we pride ourselves on being transparent, fair, and ethically sound. In running this competition, we expect the same from the PPC community. To not address these issues head-on is just not our cup of tea.
In efforts to even the playing field, we scrubbed the list of obvious fake entries and cleaned it up to the best of our ability. In the future, we hope to only see real votes. Anyone caught stuffing the ballot box in the future, will be disqualified from the list.
Votes should be cast by the people that respect you and are inspired by your influence in the PPC world. If someone is willing to take the time to vote for you, that means way more than a bunch of fake votes. That’s what makes a person truly influential.
Like I said before though, votes are only one part of the complex formula that goes into calculating what makes someone truly influential in our industry. You can read more about the methodology on how we arrived at the rankings below the infographic. 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. Some of you have been extremely busy this past year with interviews, podcasts, and speaking engagements! We even had a rising star from last year make it into the big list this year!
Speaking of, 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. If you’ve gone to any digital conferences this year, you will probably see some familiar faces!
Ok, after a bit of Debby Downer news, it’s time to get to the exciting part. Regardless of what happened with the votes, we feel confident that this list reflects some of the most hardworking and influential professionals in the world of PPC.
The Official 2018 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 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, interviews, 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 (May 2017 – April 2018). We feel this truly measures 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 2017
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?