Starting the first week of March, we noticed a massive uptick on most of our sites for any query that included the search term “lawyer.” Sites that were relatively flat in clicks saw a sudden increase in action to the site, all for these lawyer-centric terms.

The vast majority of these clicks are coming from the U.S. Yet this big fluctuation in “lawyer” clicks doesn’t seem to coincide with an increase in impressions.

Some Patterns We’ve Noticed in Our Clients’ Data

Here are four big takeaways we’ve got from parsing our data partway through the month of March.

1. Increases Are for Geo Keywords and Practice Names

While digging into the keywords, it appears that most of the increase is going to geo-specific terms (e.g., car accident lawyer seattle, best medical malpractice lawyer seattle wa) as well as branded terms (e.g., Philie Law Firm).

2. The Boost Favors Personal Injury Clients, Especially Auto Accidents

Interestingly, the main sites we see affected by this lawyer-spike are lawyers practicing personal injury law—car accidents, specifically. 72% of the sites impacted saw an increase in these motor vehicle accident terms (e.g., car accident lawyer near me, truck accident lawyer seattle wa, etc.).

3. More “Lawyer” Clicks Coincides with Better “Lawyer” SERP Rankings

A majority of sites that have benefited from this lawyer-click uptick have also experienced better rankings for these lawyer-specific terms. 74% of our clients who experienced this fluctuation saw an increase in rankings for their “lawyer” keywords.

4. Many of the “Lawyer” Keywords Are for People at the Bottom of the Funnel

A majority of these “lawyer” keywords are at the bottom of the marketing funnel (BOFU). So an increase in these rankings could mean more cases, and that means more money in your pocket.

Many Questions Still Remain About the March “Lawyer” Keyword Uptick

As of March 18th, 2025, the numbers have yet to return to their pre-March levels.

It is currently unclear if these results stem from Google’s March 2025 core algorithm update. This started rolling out on March 13th, nearly two weeks after the SERP volatility began.

Then again, something else could be at play here. Maybe Google finally decided Reddit and other forums aren’t the best results for local searches.

Again, what’s interesting is that the trend in impressions doesn’t directly correlate with the trend in clicks. We will need to collect more data as time goes on to see when/if these numbers level out.

We’ll keep you posted on the blog as more numbers come in and more trends become apparent.

Many of you have undoubtedly heard something about the brewing fight between WordPress.org and WP Engine, so we wanted to take a moment to put everyone at ease and let you know how this will or will not impact your Mockingbird hosted websites.

Mockingbird has been hosting our websites on WP Engine since 2017 and find their mix of service, speed, and security to be a good fit for our clients’ needs, despite Mockingbird paying a bit of a premium vs. other options. 

What’s The Fight About?

The fight between WordPress.org and WP Engine includes multiple issues but centers around a trademark disagreement. From WordPress.org’s position, they don’t like that customers can be confused by the name WP Engine and assume that WP Engine is the official paid version of WordPress (while WordPress.org receives no financial compensation from WP Engine). WP Engine, on the other hand, points out that “WP” is not technically a WordPress trademark and is used by any number of companies producing WordPress-related software products who also pay no trademark licensing fees to WordPress.org. A far more thorough breakdown can be found on TechCrunch but the net-net is that WordPress.org has now “banned” WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org’s resources.

What This Means for You Today

In the short term, no action is required. WordPress sites running on WP Engine are no less secure today than they were two weeks ago and we expect no degradation of the excellent site loading times that we’ve come to expect from WP Engine’s streamlined purpose-built WordPress servers. From our standpoint, access to WordPress.org offers efficient access to the most current stable versions of plugins but is not actually required, as the plugins are available individually on the developers’ websites or via other plugin repository sites. Over the weekend, WP Engine integrated another plugin repository to streamline the process.

What’s the Long-term Plan?

In the longer term, If WP Engine and WordPress.org can’t work out their differences, we will evaluate migrating our sites to another server company to mitigate any exposure to the long-term risk that this dispute could actually put WP Engine out of business, requiring us to do multiple migrations in a rushed manner. If a decision to migrate is made in the future, Mockingbird will do everything in our power to make it a straightforward and easy transition. 

If you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out to your Mockingbird Client Success manager.

GNGF Bought by Scorpion

Well – the rumors from 2 weeks ago turned true… last week, Scorpion purchased digital legal marketing agency, GNGF (or Get Noticed, Get Found for those of you in the game for a while.)  There’s been online forum chatter amongst their clients as to what this means. I’ve talked with 4 different GNGF law firms and thought I’d share a summary of those thoughts here.

First, the Upside….

Scorpion has an absolutely massive data set to work with.  Their AI technology, especially as it pertains to Google PPC is really world class. Combining the sheer volume of data and their AI expertise means Scorpion’s ability to optimize their overall PPC bidding system is unparalleled in the legal world. GNGF CEO, Mark Homer sited this in a recent podcast interview about his sale as a strong upside for GNGF’s clients. It’s also their rationale for Scorpion having a completely closed system – in which end clients don’t have access to their own Google Ads, Keywords, and the backend of their proprietary platform.  That’s a tradeoff you have to be comfortable with in order to benefit from Scorpion’s AI prowess, massive data set and extremely efficient campaigns.

Additionally, Scorpion pioneered amazing website design and while the website design world has caught up, most of the Scorpion sites remain visually appealing (and presumably mathematically optimized for high conversion rates.)

UPDATED CONTENT:  After this published, I did receive an email from a Practice Management expert with the following… (which attests to how a large spender can benefit from Scorpion’s closed box system):

I sent your Scorpion article to two lawyers recently.  One is a small family law firm who is in the process of trying to leave Scorpion.  He said the article confirmed his feelings and suspicions about Scorpion. The other lawyer, a small firm federal plaintiff employment lawyer, whose firm has “volume issues” said this:

I have been a client of Scorpion since 2016 or so and they have done well for me since day 1.  They have literally made me millions of dollars.

But….

Scorpion Handcuffs

I really dislike the technical, analytical and contractual handcuffs employed by Scorpion:

Technical Handcuffs

Scorpion’s proprietary system means a)you can’t work on your own site b)you can’t transfer your own site to another vendor c)if Scorpion’s code base doesn’t support what you need, you are shit out of luck.  To this date, I haven’t seen a multi-lingual site developed by Scorpion using hreflang tags, for example.  If I were a GNGF client, whose site is currently built on the widely utilized WordPress platform, I’d have huge qualms about donning the technical handcuffs of a proprietary platform. (Note: I have NO insight into Scorpion’s intent to migrate GNGF clients onto their platform, but I don’t know how they could deploy the benefits of their closed system without doing so.).

Analytical Handcuffs

Want to see data from your own PPC campaigns?  Sorry – it’s a closed door; you can’t get in.

Scorpion shall be under no obligation to disclose Paid Search Keywords to Clients

Relying on the reporting fox to guard your campaign henhouse is a very very bad idea.  If I were a GNGF client – I’d be downloading all of my current keyword data and establishing business benchmarks that I control for Google Ads Campaigns. You literally don’t know what you are buying. One of the big problems with not being able to access the data in your own PPC campaigns is that you can’t disambiguate Branded vs. Non-Branded campaigns. And this is so foundationaly important because the economics are so fundamentally different.  Put differently, if you can’t see into your own campaigns, an agency can deliver you low cost and high converting branded traffic (“Smith and Jones Law Firm“) under the premise that it is high cost, incremental business from expensive competitive keywords (“Motorcycle Accident Attorney Nashville“).

Further, separating branded vs non branded ad campaigns is getting increasingly important, as Google goes out of its way to conflate the two.

Contractual Handcuffs

I’ve never liked retaining a client on the sole basis of a contract and to be fair, I have seen shorter term Scorpion contracts than some big box providers (looking at you FindLaw).  Ignoring the fact that the agreement has a one-way For Cause termination clause:

Account Person:Client Ratio

One of the upsides to running campaigns through all of this AI automation is that you don’t have to employ many people to do so. A Scorpion Account Executive told us she juggled 60+ accounts at a time – turning the AEs essentially into order takers and report readers. IMO there’s no deeper relationship, no consultation, no getting to know your business, no thinking outside the box, no strategery.  To be fair, I believe at Scorpion’s very large accounts do get a VIP treatment with an Account Executive running fewer accounts; but do you really want to be one of sixty while the market’s 100 Pound Gorilla gets individualized attention?

SEO vs. PPC

I strongly believe that digital agencies should be playing the whole chess board.  Go back 10 years and Scorpion was a solid player in the SEO game, but I wouldn’t count them in the top 10 today.  That’s simply because SEO success is much less scaleable than automated, AI driven PPC campaigns.  Now this is a fully subjective statement on my part and I’m sure someone can show me some counterpoints, but overall Scorpion has shifted heavily to paid management.

Speaking of SEO and GNGF I will say; we have fundamental disagreement on the strategic value of backlinks, as at Mockingbird we see them as foundational for a successful campaign and disagree with the notion that links aren’t that important (as described by GNGF here: Local without Linkbuilding).  Given the difficulty and high cost of acquiring successful local links, I don’t believe a move to Scorpion is going to change the SEO game for GNGF clients. I could very well be wrong from an SEO perspective.

So let me start with… this isn’t my post. It was sent to me in response to some of the recent posts I’ve made about how Google has evolved both their PPC and more recently, their LSA tactics to deliberately squeeze more money out of advertisers without adding any more value and obfuscated those moves by limiting visibility into reporting.  It’s a rage post that someone banged out and then (wisely?) decided not to post fearing retribution.  I know the guy who wrote it, very well. We’ve spent countless hours over the years talking digital marketing and he and I both share a common path from Google Advocate to Apologist to… well, wherever we are now.  He’s working in legal for the better part of a decade and currently is in-house at a multi-state PI firm overseeing a large, sophisticated online and offline marketing campaign.

And if you aren’t currently furious at Google… have a read because you aren’t really paying attention…

As a marketer, advertiser, and longtime Google apologist, it pains me to say this but fuck Google. 

Over the past year, it’s become clear that Google doesn’t care about individual businesses advertising on their platform, and it’s increasingly looking like they barely care about providing decent results for people researching businesses in their city.

When Google quietly jettisoned “Don’t be Evil” back in 2018 that seemed like a bad sign. “Don’t be evil” feels like the kind of mantra that, once stated, can’t be removed without raising some eyebrows. It’s like having a sign next to your pet saying, “this dog doesn’t bite.” Once people notice the sign is gone it’s not unreasonable to wonder what prompted the removal. But whatever, Google still encouraged employees to, “do the right thing,” and barreled forward on their path to total internet domination. 

With Google’s 80% market share necessitating a strong presence for any business looking to reach potential clients online, the relationship between local businesses and Google has always been somewhat contentious. It’s not surprising that many business owners have been frustrated with everything from shakeups in rankings, shady (but effective) tactics in local search, and a fallacious (but eerily persistent) impression that spending more in PPC increases prominence in organic search results. 

I’ve frequently discounted most of these concerns with the following defenses of Google:

1. Google is doing the best they can. – Policing and monitoring the internet is a herculean and losing task. Even if you’re making a legitimate effort it’s an unwinnable game of whack-a-mole. However, it’s in Google’s best interest to decipher what users are searching for and deliver a strong selection set for each query.
2. Google relies on searchers finding the best result possible. – My premise has been that by ensuring high-quality results for users, Google can maintain their market position as long as possible. If results stop being useful, seeking out competing alternatives becomes more likely. As a result, it benefits Google to develop and continuously refine some criteria of what constitutes a good business and place those companies more prominently in front of potential customers.
3. Google can’t be expected to care about any individual business and devotes focus to entire industries. – Evaluating each individual business is impossible, but having industry specific criteria is slightly more manageable. Google can’t reasonably assess every business in a category, but they can define what’s important to potential customers. If your business isn’t showing up for a specific intent-based search, my Google sided explanation would be that it’s because you’re not what Google thinks that searcher is looking for. It’s not nefarious, it’s just Google looking at a much bigger picture than just your business.

Enter Local Service Ads and a whole new corrupt ecosystem. 

 Unlike the PPC days where ads were ads and a reasonable percentage of searchers understood the distinction, Local Service Ads have increasingly (and I’d argue deliberately) muddied the waters. 

Having already optimized PPC ads to mitigate ad blindness, Google has been finding new and creative ways to effectively monetize searches with high intent. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, especially when it provides businesses with a way to compete for the attention of a potential customer in the market for their services. 

Local Service Ads were launched in 2015, but didn’t really take off until 2018-2019 as industry categories continued to expand. These ads, unlike traditional PPC, imparted a soft-endorsement from Google by listing the advertised business as “Google Screened” and bestowing them with a snazzy checkmark. 

The original intent seemed to be sound. The idea of “Google Screened” was presented as a way to ensure searchers looking to hire a local business, specifically in industries where a contractor would be visiting their home (think plumbers, locksmiths, electricians, etc.), could know with certainty that anyone from that business performing house calls had undergone a background check and was “Google Screened.”

Over time, categories expanded and the product morphed into a pay-per-call version of Google Ads, where high intent searches frequently delivered Local Service Ads at the top of the results and approximately 1 in 3 searchers engaged with LSAs instead of the local map pack or traditional organic results. With LSAs becoming one of the most effective ways for local businesses to get in front of potential customers, competition quickly increased. 

Fast forward to 2024 and businesses are more reliant than ever on utilizing some form of Google advertising to reach potential clients. Shockingly, as more businesses rely on their platform, Google’s customer support has dropped to an “all-time low.”

Google has officially turned into Comcast from a decade ago. Congratulations!

All of this would be annoying for local advertisers if it wasn’t for Google’s most recent, and most insidious, update to their Local Service Ads platform: the addition of “Branded Local Service Ads.” 

A few months ago, Google added a “Direct Business Search” feature within each LSA account. This setting defaulted to “on”, and was pitched as a way to, “Let Local Services Ads highlight your business in results when someone searches for your brand or business directly.” 

As someone that has defended the value of bidding on your own brand in the PPC space, this felt like an obnoxious extension of that same idea. But the devil is in the details, and the total lack of transparency surrounding what is and is not a branded search has been frustrating at best and deliberately misleading at worst. 

Given Google’s dominance in the search space, the only way to steer clear of the auction-based, client-to-the-highest-bidder model has been to aggressively brand your business using other forms of advertising. If people are searching for your business by name, Google has historically showed your result prominently. As it should. 

Now, with the implementation of LSAs for branded searches, Google is attempting to squeeze more revenue from local businesses while providing no benefit to the consumer. It’s hard to defend a duplicate listing placed directly above a business’ organic listing as having any real value to the searcher. 

Making things worse, there is zero transparency provided when someone does call from your “direct search” LSA ad. Despite a “job type” tag built into the dashboard, Google does nothing to denote what calls are from branded searches vs. category specific searches. This makes it impossible to separate acquisition costs like you would with a traditional PPC campaign and artificially lowers your acquisition cost in the aggregate. After all, most companies are better at converting people who already know they want to work with them than the ones who are shopping for the best fit. 

Additionally, because there’s no insight into the cost for any given call, you have absolutely no idea what Google is charging you to place your own ad atop your own business that you’ve already spent money branding to the general public. Obviously, you can turn the ads off and refuse to participate in Google’s shameless cash grab. But, there’s no guarantee Google won’t show ads from competing businesses within your own branded searches. Barry Schwartz posted about Google showing competitor ads within individual GBP listings back in March. Weeks earlier, Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky had posted about the same issue occurring for the branded search “A1 Garage Door Service.” A Google Ads Liaison Officer responded to the post, saying, “This is a bug (and it was thought to be a non-brand query) – a fix is underway.” Yes, accidents happen. But preventable accidents occurring solely because of a greedy and unnecessary product rollout are significantly less forgivable than a well-intentioned mistake. Even if this bug has indeed been fixed for certain branded terms, it’s going to remain fuzzy for brand specific searches in industries where the business name often contains the service category.

In a vacuum, the rollout of this ad type would be annoying. Coupled with Google’s push toward trusting their algorithm, letting them adjust your bidding strategy to “maximize conversions”, removing any clarity around what you’re paying for individual lead types, and eliminating any meaningful level of customer service for businesses spending well into six-figures per month, it’s hard not to think this is at least evil adjacent. 

Sure, Google could “do the right thing” and sacrifice some potential revenue by not plowing ahead with a redundant ad type that confuses searchers while bilking businesses in a way that deliberately obfuscates the price being paid. However, it’s increasingly feeling like Google’s idea of doing the right thing means holding onto their massive profit margins regardless of how that money is acquired. 

With over 80% of the global search market, Google knows you need them a lot more than they need you. It’s not going to get better, and even though I’d already resigned myself a while ago that we were all racing to a break even for digital leads while Google laughingly lined their pockets; paying a premium for people who already want to call to do so via a duplicative “Google Screened” button was a surprisingly obnoxious twist. 

Each greedy new feature Google rolls out adds to the prisoner’s dilemma facing online advertisers. We all know it’s an unwinnable game, and there are way too many business owners for collaborative defiance. But, the fact that there’s no other game we can play should scare all of us.

So, quietly and with no byline, I’ll say again, fuck Google! Fuck them so much I’m turning off this one feature and begrudgingly continuing all other Google Ads. They’re going to feel this one when their next earnings report comes out! 

The first time I ever met Tony, he interrupted and upbraided me in front of about 400 lawyers at a New York Bar Association event.

I just learned from Jeena Belil’s Facebook post that Tony died and I write this hoping that one day his sons might come across this post. I don’t write blog posts that often anymore, but some stories just belong written down.  I’m going to share two Tony stories – they day we met and the last day I ever saw him.

So back to that NY Bar Association event back in 2008… I was the only marketing dude for a little known (at the time) start up called Avvo.  Our CEO, Mark Britton and I were on a charm offensive, introducing the concept of Internet-As-Marketing-Channel to lawyers through appearances at Bar Associations around the country. I had a talk about this new thing called SEO and in one of the slides I talked about the importance of Name Search.  The example I sited was a lawyer named Ashley Dupree Russell whose Avvo profile exploded after the New York Times identified Ashley Dupre – the woman involved in the Eliot Spitzer scandal. My talk went something like this:

“…so, now you have traffic to this lawyer’s profile exploding, because her name is getting misidentified by Google as the hooker”

It was at this point that Tony stood up and castigated me in front of the audience:

“Stop!  Stop right now!  Don’t you ever call a woman a hooker.  That lady is someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, someone’s sister.  Don’t you ever dare disrespect a woman like that.”

I sheepishly stumbled through the rest of the talk; afterwards Tony approached me and Mark.  We ended up going out for lunch, along with Jeena and Andrea Cannavina, to a deli nearby and talked for hours about the web and lawyers. I remember asking him if there was anything we could do for him and he gave me a very sad answer: “You can’t do anything for me.  The only thing I really want is something no one can do.  Unless you have a cure for scleroderma.” It’s a horrible disease which his wife, Mary Rose was suffering from (and eventually succumbed to.) At the end of a long lunch, Tony offered to drive Mark and me to La Guardia in some oversized black American car. That day, in one instant, Tony taught me more about lawyers and the meaning of (many, but not all) lawyers and ultimately lead me to crafting the first of our Mockingbird’s 10 Commandments.

1. We Love Lawyers – Attorneys who represent individuals are the primary counterbalance to corporate malfeasance, the greedy insurance industry and the widespread abuse of police and political power. We are honored to play a small role in this system.

My second story is much more personal and fun.  Mockingbird’s VP of Ops, Robert Williams and I were headed to New York. Rob had never been east of the Mississippi and I wanted to give him the ultimate New York experience so I told Tony I’d be in town and I wanted to go out for an Italian meal.  We met Tony (and Andrea again) at some ridiculously Italian restaurant – our waiter was a heavily accented dude named Michaelangelo. Tony showed up late and took another 20 minutes to get to the back of the restaurant where we were seated b/c he had to stop and talk with half of the people in there. We quaffed overpriced wine and devoured plate after plate of impossibly good Italian food. After dinner, as we were leaving, the proprietor insisted on getting picture of us – we were joined by some lady who I believe was the owner’s wife and I have hopes that there’s a pic of Rob, Conrad, Andrea, Tony and this lady sitting on the wall in some amazing Italian restaurant. Many diners recognize Tony, but have no idea who the two Seattleites are. Tony regaled Rob and me with stories over lawyering and those times he took off his JD in pursuit of Justice. We talked about parenting and his boys who he adored and of course his wife, who I never got to meet. It’s around 11:30 and Tony insisted on taking Rob and me for a tour of Manhattan – b/c back in the day, he used to drive a cab and cabbies used to get paid to take tourists around on an unofficial tour.  So we piled into his oversized black Lincoln or Caddy and Tony narrated a tour of the city for Rob. We’re uptown when it hits Tony that the only way to finish the night is to have a pastrami sandwich and this downtown, famous 24 hour Jewish deli.  Now, I’ve just finished about half my weight in linguine vongole as we hurtle through Manhattan on a suspension that clearly needs to be replaced and I’m trying to imagine downing a pastrami sandwich, but Tony insists. We finally arrive and thank Yahweh it was some Jewish holiday and they were closed.

The picture accompanying this post is from that day in 2008 and thanks to Jeena for sharing it. Tony was New York the way you wanted New York to be… Italian, gruff, connected, bombastic yet entirely welcoming.  NYC is a little less NYC than it was last week.