Rand Fishkin
Co-founder of SparkToro
Rand Fishkin is an SEO specialist based in Seattle, United States.
Rand Fishkin is an SEO entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and former chief executive of Moz, where he helped make SEO tools, metrics and search education accessible to a far wider marketing audience. He became a prominent educator through Whiteboard Friday and his explanations of ranking factors, keyword research and search strategy. He later founded SparkToro, an audience research platform built to establish where audiences actually spend their time. His recent work examines zero click search and how marketers can reduce dependence on conventional search traffic.
- Based in
- Seattle, United States
- Specialisms
- Technical SEO
Rand Fishkin’s career runs the length of modern SEO, from its early growth to the present shift towards zero click results and AI driven discovery. He started the SEOmoz blog in 2003. It became Moz, one of the most influential communities and software businesses the industry has produced, reaching more than 200 employees and over $50 million in revenue during his time there, with an audience of more than 30 million annual visitors. He contributed to The Art of SEO and Inbound Marketing & SEO.
His attention has moved increasingly to a harder question: how people find information when a click on a website is no longer the outcome. Through SparkToro he researches where audiences actually spend their time and which sources shape their decisions. His work on zero click marketing examines how Google and the social platforms satisfy demand themselves instead of passing users on.
That research bears directly on answer engine optimisation, where visibility can depend on being surfaced inside an answer rather than beneath it. It applies equally to generative search, where LLM based systems mediate discovery before anyone reaches a publisher or a brand.
His research has been cited by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, and referenced by publications including The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. He has keynoted hundreds of events worldwide on changes in search behaviour and digital marketing. The value of that span is perspective: he has watched search visibility change from the inside as platforms increasingly answer queries themselves.
Areas of expertise
Rand Fishkin specialises in Technical SEO.