Google is Fricken Strange...

Keith,

Are you aware that Google will serve up personalized results to show you webpages you have gone to before near the top in your searches?

In other words, you could rank for a keyword/phrase on your browsers that others wouldn't even see. They could and would see different results.

Here's a fast way to screw with your rankings...keep searching Google for the keyword/phrase you want to rank for and continue to let them know that what they are showing you is irrelevent because you fail to find any of the results 'clickable'.

If you really want to find out what your true ranking is you need to use a third party asset to do the searching. If you keep doing it yourself through your browsers you may find you keep telling Google that your site is not something you want showing up in the serps. Their algorithm will record all your searches and pool that in with the rest of the data.

If others are doing the same as you...looking for the same competitive keyword/phrase, and nobody is actually clicking on any of the serp results you'll get what many folks find. A boatload of "monthly searches" and no traffic to your website.

Just food for thought.

~Bill

Keith,

If you are familiar with Google Adwords you know they track CTRs of the advertisers. The same goes for search results. If either of those two produces less than expected results they change the order in which they show them to the public.

In the case of Adwords they may jack the price to the advertiser or simply deactivate the keyword for that advertiser using Quality Score as one of the reasons. There's a little more to it than that but this isn't about Adwords.

The front page of G is just as valuable to them as it is to webmasters. Leaving 'back button specials' or sites that no one cares about near the top of the serps is counter productive. To everyone, searchers included.

It's nice to believe that it's possible to put up crap and get a first page ranking because you crushed it with your backlinking strategy, but if your efforts don't yield real clicks then don't count on being up near the top for very long.

If you ran Google would you just allow the person with the most backlinks to dominate a keyword? Of course not, you'd like to see relevent content provided to your searchers.

But the world of keywords/keyphrases is huge with many long tail keyphrases being typed in for the first time. So until the public votes on which websites are valid and which ones are just spam, it's possible to rank well for any given keyword/keyphrase for a period of time.

And to answer your question about "doing some statistical research on such things" the answer is no. I have had a website up since the late nighties and have watched as others have targeted the keywords that I rank well for and have seen a few rank highly with crap content and a boatload of backlinks only to disappear within a few weeks or days.

My niche is a very closed niche and all the players know each other. It is somewhat humorus to watch people try to rank in that niche because most of our website are a decade or older with very few backlinks campaigns run by the webmasters. We're in ecommerce, and you can't game that niche unless you have the infrastructure to back it up. Yet newbies still try and all they get for their effort is a brief moment in the sunshine before the general public votes them out. You can only fool people once or twice with a junk site where others have the real goods.

I know a lot of folks will argue with my point of view and so be it. I can only give you my perceived experience from a few years of playing the game. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.

It's not hard to test this theory out, mind you. All you need to do is pick a keyword/keyphrase, put up a less than stellar site, backlink the begezzus out of it and see how long you stay at the top if you do get a good ranking. Then you can use that as a statistical model if you document it well.

And one other thing to keep in mind...if you do have a so-so site, yet people click on it such that you show G it's presenting links of relevence, then even a junk site can remain near the top of the serps. But no click throughs, or instant back button reactions, and you won't remain relevent for long.

~Bill

Matt,

I went rabbit hunting the other day with my bow and arrows. I saw two rabbits huddled together and thought I'd take them both out with the same arrow. I missed, and they took off for the hills in opposite directions. I thought I had them dead to rights but it turns out I was just splitting hares. :rolleyes:

~Bill