Plus, how to block AI crawlers and a big creator win  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Hi Raptive, With the Super Bowl at the start of the week and Valentine’s Day at the end, we know it’s a busy time—but when is it not these days? We’ll keep this intro short and sweet! Read on to learn more about an impressive Comscore update, get a comprehensive new guide to content production from our team of SEO experts, see an important reminder about AI crawlers, and more. What’s new Raptive ranks #1 for food and family for the 7th year in a row Your content continues to shape the digital world in powerful ways. Thanks to the collective strength of our community, we are excited to share that Raptive continues to rank among the top 10 digital media companies, with an overall #9 ranking, according to the latest Comscore update. With an audience of 226 million, we are the world’s leading creator media company and #1 in food and family categories—a distinction we’ve held for seven consecutive years. We are also #5 for our social media audiences and have consistently outperformed major publishers for five years, including Hearst, Dotdash Meredith, USA Today Network, and Penske Media. Creators across our network lead in multiple high-value content categories, representing the diversity of online audiences and interests. These categories include: Food, Lifestyle, Family Home Travel Pets Tech Sports Gaming, Entertainment Finance Read the full press release → Top resource The ultimate guide to content production for audience and traffic growth Creating new content is the key to increasing the reach and revenue of your site, satisfying the needs of more readers, and growing your brand—even for well-established sites. But it can be hard to know how much new content to create, where to quickly identify high-value opportunities, and how to balance publishing within your budget and among the other aspects of running a business. This new guide to content production in the Resource Center covers it all—and backs up our recommendations with data. Our team of SEO experts recently analyzed an entire year’s worth of content production data from our network, with insights that can help you make data-driven decisions for your own site. Think of this guide as your SEO playbook, outlining actionable steps to help you create more impactful, high-quality content that resonates with your audience and earns you more traffic and revenue. Create a smarter content plan → Did you know? Protect your content from AI crawlers with the Raptive Ads WordPress plugin The Raptive Ads WordPress plugin (version 3.6.0 and above) helps you easily block AI crawlers from companies like OpenAI, Facebook, Anthropic, and Google that scrape and train their AI tools on your content—without consent or compensation. Many large publishers like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Vox, and Reuters have already blocked most or all of these AI crawlers using this method. Does blocking AI crawlers affect Google Search? According to Google, blocking the Google-Extended user agent does not affect your Google Search rankings or inclusion in AI Overviews. Here is what Google says in its documentation: “Google-Extended is a standalone product token that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Gemini Apps and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products. Grounding with Google Search on Vertex AI does not use web pages for grounding that have disallowed Google-Extended. Google-Extended does not impact a site’s inclusion or ranking in Google Search.” We did our own research, too. We analyzed search traffic for sites that have already blocked Google-Extended and found no negative impact. We do not block Google-Extended by default and leave this option in your hands, but we strongly recommend checking this box to block the Google-Extended user agent. Take action against AI crawlers Our step-by-step guide provides instructions on enabling these settings and protecting your content. By refusing to allow AI companies to crawl and scrape your content, you’re ensuring your content isn’t used without your explicit permission, sending a clear message supporting ethical and fair AI practices, and lending strength to our fight for content creators. If you don’t use WordPress or the Raptive Ads plugin, here’s additional information on how to manually block common AI crawlers. Protect your content and block AI crawlers today → Don’t miss Sign up for the free How to Make Money with Email course with Matt Molen Want to build a thriving email list that can drive more revenue for your business? Take advantage of your free access to the monthly How to Make Money with Email course with Matt Molen, of Email Crush. This exclusive offering for Platinum, Platinum Elite, and Luminary creators gives you access to: Real-life examples of creators using their email newsletters to generate revenue Step-by-step systems to add new revenue streams to your business Proven methods to grow your list Simple email funnels you can set up on any platform Sign up through this form for the month that works best for you. Spots are limited each month, to keep the group size small and focused, but there’s still room in the March, April, and May sessions. Register today → Creator spotlight Case study: Laura Fuentes on working smarter and growing faster With a strong portfolio of English and Spanish-language recipe websites, including MOMables.com, LauraFuentes.com, and TequilaOClock.com, Laura Fuentes says her success comes from listening to her audience and giving them what they need, not chasing viral trends. Since she started with us in 2018, all six of her websites have grown in traffic and revenue each year. In fact, her portfolio has seen 816% growth in annual revenue since that time. In 2024, her year-over-year revenue increased by 48% and pageviews by 34%. Laura says she focuses her energy where it will have the greatest impact, leveraging data to work smarter. “When it comes to things like algorithm updates, I accept it and move forward because those are the things I don’t own and I don’t control. I either pivot and adapt or my business dies.” Laura Fuentes Learn more about Laura and how she feels about the future of her business in our latest creator case study on the Blog. Get more insights from Laura → Was this email helpful? This email was sent to email.clausen@gmail.com. You've received this email because you work with Raptive, and we're excited to help you continue to grow. To ensure our emails arrive in your inbox, please add hello@email.raptive.com to your contacts or safe sender list. 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