Subject: Advanced Internet Technology

Topic: Search Engine Optimazation

Difficulty: High

Many organizations like to track their search engine. For that they want to use search engine as aSEO measurement tool. But it is problematic for many reasons.

1. Google results are not consistent:

• Different geographies often give different results.
• Different data centers give different results.
• Results are personalized for logged-in users based on their search histories.
• No rank checker can monitor and report all of these inconsistencies.

2. The Google API rarely matches up to what anyone sees in the search result:

• It appears to match up only on very heavily trafficked, consistent search results; anything mid-tail or long tail is invariably inaccurate.

• It is extremely slow to update, so even though news results or geographic results might be mixed in, the API wont update for days or sometimes weeks.

3. Obsessing over rankings can result in poor strategic decisions:

• When sites obsess over rankings for particular keywords, the time and energy they expend on those few key phrases often produces far less value than would have been produced if they had spent those resources on the site as a whole.

• Long-tail traffic very often accounts for 70% to 80% of the demand curve, and it is much easier to rank in the long tail and get valuable traffic from there than it is to concentrate on the few rankings at the top of the demand curve.