Google, Google. Where is my site
Fascination with the vagaries of the serp’s has caused me many a sleepless night. I’d bet it has done it’s work on you too. It’s bad enough that we can only make (educated) guesses about the ranking algo’s reaction to a change we make on our page. Now there’s some magic thrown in the mix.
If you’ve been in the optimization business for any length of time, you have witnessed the difference in rankings, for your term, from different locations. I usually attribute the differences to several possible reasons. Chiefly, that there are different data centers involved.
Others that I believe have an effect are: Moon phase, tidal patterns, the delta C in rainfall for the San Fernando Valley, the level of amber liquid in the bottle, and perhaps most important–the number of games of WoW played today.
I just found out yesterday that there is also the possibility of magic being involved. Did I mention that above?
First a little background. Some of you know that I follow the blog posts on SEO Theory. There are several posts there that are related to a difference of opinion between Michael Martinez, of SEO Theory, and Rand Fishkin, of SEOmoz. Now, that may not be precisely true since I haven’t heard Rand say much about the whole deal. In any case, there are some other folks, who I never heard of before, taking one side of the argument, and Michael taking the other.
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Sidebar
I cannot find one good reason to have two links (on my page) pointing to the same other webpage, but with different anchor text. That’s what the argument is all about…whether Google will pass ‘juice’ with the second link. Why is this important?
/Sidebar
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About mid-way down in this post, Mr. Martinez told me something that I had never heard of before. The context of the remark is that not all tests are valid, and that if results are not reproducible, the hypothesis is flawed. So, here is the part that got me:
But we don’t all see the same search engine. In fact, I was both amused and frustrated today by the fact that Google AdWords’ keyword research tool shows query numbers for one of my staff but not me. We use the same network to reach out to the Internet. We’re on the same IP address. I see the numbers from home, but didn’t see them at work.
I’ve been on phone calls and have exchanged emails with clients in the same city who have sworn their sites were at position X in the search results (or nowhere to be seen) while I was looking at their sites in position Y. It doesn’t even have to be a different data center (although usually I assume that’s what we’re seeing). Once in a while I find that someone’s PC has magically reconfigured itself to point at a specific IP address for Google. I’ve never figured out how that happens (as it’s NOT happening in a hosts file).
Worth repeating with emphasis…..I find that someone’s PC has magically reconfigured itself to point at a specific IP address for Google.
Magic indeed. So, what does this have to do with anything?
Assume that you have completed extensive SEO work on a website. You’ve done a craftsmanlike job, all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. After *whatever* time, you see your site in the Google results pages. You check several queries, make adjustments to your pages, see your rank climbing, and are a happy camper. You believe that your target audience will find your page in approximately the same position as you see it …… bzzzzzit, you lose Sparky. It ain’t necessarily so.
What if Mary WorkingMother, from Des Moines, and Joe GolfNut, from Baton Rouge, have had their PC ‘magically reconfigured’? They may not see your page in the results at all.
How many others are there like that? Is there any way we can find out what percentage of all PC’s are so reconfigured? Is this only a Google phenom? Is it browser related?
Shittah. Questions that I can’t answer. Michael, Rand, any of you others, if you can shed more light on this (either here or in your own venue) I would truly be grateful. If it is to be in your venue, please drop me a note here so I can follow along. T.I.A.
Dink
