Search Engine Rankings: Worthless or Worthwhile

A never ending romance…….

Not long ago, Google announced that it has banned a prominent rankings checker tool WebPosition. This move by Google, as always, created a ripple effect in our industry. Soon the topic of discussion shifted from what instigated Google’s action to the worthiness of search engine rankings - a subject that has been widely debated and discussed. Still out interest or rather curiosity in this topic refuses to die.

This move by Google may set precedence for other search engines to follow suit. The reason behind Google’s action may be the fact that queries arising from automated tools put extra burden on the computing resources. With a major like Google, the reason seems to flimsy. Automated queries skew the search data sounds like a credible justification and many of you would nod your heads in agreement.

I read several articles and blog entries, both for and against the importance of search engine rankings, which provided compelling argument to support their claim. Here’s my take on this topic. Rankings are important, no doubt about it. But should ranking be the only parameter to judge the success of a SEO campaign? Search engine rankings are crucial but (there is always a ‘but’) it is not the only defining factor. Measuring the success of a search engine optimization campaign solely on rankings prevents you from having a holistic view.

The end goal of any website is to achieve maximum conversion. Let’s take two situations to depict a clearer picture (every thing else being constant):

1. The website does not rank #1 for its targeted keyword but still achieves 50% conversion.
2. The website ranks #1 for its targeted keyword but only manages a meager 10% conversion.

Even with primitive computational skills, you would be able to figure out that the first situation is nearer to your end goal. Ranking also render itself useless in situations wherein the keywords being targeted are obscure or driving irrelevant traffic. Getting less but qualified traffic would be sufficient to suffice the end goal. It however does not imply that ranking is worthless especially in the case of niche market.

Ranking on the second page for a niche market would mean that you will find your listing surrounded by a heap of irrelevant results. Searchers would not go that far looking for your website and with traffic being next to nothing; even 100% conversion would miserably fail to put a smile on your face.

Rankings are not the be all and end all for any online business. There are many more factors that command due consideration and are instrumental in providing you a complete picture.

Google’s double standard

‘To err is human’ and is quite understandable, as it is not only hard but impossible to achieve perfection – Accepted. On the flip side machines do work (whatever it may entail) with perfection leaving no room for error. Numerous organizations across the world have achieved the distinction of being perfect (thanks to technology) in whatever they do and people look upon them for guidance and inspiration. It is this faith and integrity that keep these organizations alive and ticking. But it also gives them the added responsibility to carry the mantle of moral and social responsibility, to be fair and just in their deeds.

To give precedence to my finding, I would like to build some basic background which would help me draw a clearer picture. The number of characters that should be used for the ‘title’ of a website is a widely debated topic. Ask this question in a SEO forum and you would be amazed at the variety of answers that you would get. Blame it on the fact that our industry operates without any set guidelines or blame it on search engines that closely guard their secret. Ask the same question to any seasoned SEM professional and pat comes the reply, “65-70 characters”. Not an exact figure, so as to accommodate as many search engines as possible, but useful nonetheless. Anything over and above the higher limit (depending on the search engine) is truncated and is usually followed by a “….”

The story is usual until now and had been sung a thousands times. However I witnessed something (only by accident) that contradicted this widely believed notion. “A temporary glitch” I thought. A repeat search yielded the same result and it leads me to believe that it is no mistake.

If you closely monitor the above snapshot you would realize that the title in question (and contention) is more that 70 characters long (89 characters to be precise) but is not truncated like any other listing. My curiosity was further piqued by the fact that the listing is related to Google. Is Google working on two sets of standards, one for itself and the other for the rest of the world? I was so tempted to discount it as an error and just get on with my usual stuff, which I was doing prior to finding this. But then, do we expect Google to make such errors or for that matter is this error at all. I will leave that to your best judgment.