• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 1, 2022

Performance marketing agency NP Digital has acquired a popular search marketing tool that listens to autocomplete search data from engines like Google.

The product, AnswerThePublic -- founded by Gary Preston and Rachel Krish in 2014 -- will integrate into NP Digital’s UberSuggest to give users visual images of Google searches and content ideas.

NP Digital CEO Mike Gullaksen declined to share the financial details of the transaction, but did say the platform has about 1 million monthly users. “We will gain many paying customers of the AnswerThePublic platform, and the agency will be available to support any users of the platform that need help with performance marketing services,” he said.

The platform enables marketers and agencies to leverage data from the largest focus group in the world -- users of Google Search. 

“Being able to mine massive data sets to identify consumer interest around needs and wants is one of the most powerful yet under-used strategies for content and search marketers,” Gullaksen says. “Layering on top of these data insights the ability to both look back and see real-time trends with powerful visualizations allows marketers to move their content initiatives forward very quickly while staying on the pulse of the consumer mindset.”

Of the 3 billion searches entered in queries by users daily, nearly all trigger an autocomplete suggestion by the search engine. This consumer insight can then be used by marketers to create in-demand content.

NP digital acquires the intellectual property. The site and the name of the tool will remain the same.

“When they decided to sell the company, they already were working on another software company, so they only sold us the technology,” Gullaksen said.

Ubersuggest, a free search engine optimization tool built by NP Digital to generate new keyword ideas, has some built-in some components of the AnswerThePublic technology. The company expects the acquisition of AnswerThePublic will further expand the technology’s capabilities.

Ubersuggest spans over 30 billion keywords and 50 trillion backlinks across 249 countries with a resounding focus on data optimization. Segmenting insights and visualizing data let customers of the tool uncover opportunities and predict outcomes faster.

Gullaksen believes making technology available for free is a way to give back to the marketing community is the fundamental building block for the company. 

“We believe access to these tools should not be limited to the bigger brands and agencies that have access to massive budgets,” he said. “We want to democratize the content and search marketing industry and give a chance to even the smallest of organizations to compete in marketing.”