Vote for the 2025 Most Influential PPC Experts

Voting has closed.

More than a 1,100 PPC professionals filled out our survey and voted on their favorite PPC experts. Stay tuned for the results in February 2025!

2025 Ranking Methodology

In the table below, you'll find our updated ranking methodology for the final 2025 ranking. The idea is that if you would use the same methodology, you should get the same ranking. Of course, you could still disagree with our ranking factors or weights, but we believe it's the most balanced approach to generate a list of influential PPC experts.

Ranking factor
Weight
Raw data methodology
Scoring methodology
Valid votes
Counting all the votes from the valid survey entries (up to 5 votes per person).

Duplicate entries or obvious “friends & family” voting behavior will be discarded.
We will use log transformation to normalize this data.
Speaking engagements
We'll count the number of speaking engagements in English of each expert (if any) during 2024, both in-person as virtual. Think of events like SMX, Pubcon, BrightonSEO, Hero Conf, MozCon, Friends of Search, ADworld experience, etc. Company webinars don't count.
Each 2024 speaking engagement generates 25%. So experts with four or more engagements will score 100%.
Podcast
If the expert (co)hosts a podcast that released new episodes during Q4 2024, we'll sum the number of ratings on Apple and Spotify.
If the podcast contains (mostly) the same content as the expert's YouTube channel, we only count one platform (the one where they scored the highest).
We will use log transformation to normalize this data.
YouTube channel
If the expert (co)hosts a YouTube channel, we'll make a snapshot of the number of subscribers in December 2024.

If two experts with at least two votes share the same YouTube channel, we assign 50% of the channel subscribers to each of them.
We will use log transformation to normalize this data.
LinkedIn engagement
We'll use PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn activity extractor to fetch all the 2024 likes, comments, and reposts on original posts from experts with at least two votes.
We will use log transformation to normalize this data.
Guest posts on SEL, SEJ, and PPC Hero
We'll count all the experts’ guest posts on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and PPC Hero during 2024.
We'll use a similar linear approach as with speaking engagements, with scores between 25% and 100% depending on the number of posts on these websites.
Book
We'll check if the expert published a relevant book in English.
If the book is a recent one (published in 2022 or later) and the expert was the only author, they'll get a 100% score.
If the book is older or the expert is a co-author, they get a 50% score.
LinkedIn followers
We'll make a snapshot of the follower count in December 2024.
We will use log transformation to normalize this data.
Newsletter
We'll check if the expert has an active newsletter, on LinkedIn or through a newsletter sign-up form on their website.
Having a newsletter generates the full 4% score unless the newsletter is shared by two experts, in which case the score is 2% for each.
Course
We'll check if the expert created an on-demand course in English about PPC.
Courses on CXL and LinkedIn Learning generate the full 4% score while selling your own course generates 3%.
X engagement
We'll use PhantomBuster’s Tweet extractor to fetch all the 2024 comments, retweets, likes, and views on original tweets from experts with at least two votes.
We will use log transformation to normalize this data.
X followers
We'll make a snapshot of the follower count in December 2024.
We will use log transformation to normalize this data.