This week Google released a very exciting new feature in Webmaster Tools – the ability to see impression data and click through data for your most popular keywords. On the face of it this is excellent information however the implications of what Google is actually telling us are pretty unprecedented in terms of how the SEO industry reports on results.
Let’s look at the actual data to start with, the report tells me the top keywords along with data for the number of impressions that my search listings have received and the number of people who actually click through to my page. A number of people have pointed out that the figures don’t match Google Analytics but I think we just have to accept that any two systems using different tracking methods are going to give different results.
The interesting thing for me is that Google is reporting rankings across a range of results, typically 1,2,3,4,5, 6-10 and 2nd page. With the advent of personalised search most people in the industry have understood that rankings won’t be the same for everybody but there was never a way of tracking the impact of this – until now.
Rankings are not real numbers
What Google is saying with this report is that your site no longer has a particular ranking for a keyword – instead you have a range of rankings determined by loads of different personalisation or perhaps time of day factors even. While in the past an agency or in-house SEO might have reported on a a 3rd place ranking for a big keyword we can now see that the ranking is actually something like this:
- 1st 4%
- 2nd 6%
- 3rd 63%
- 4th 9%
- 5th 3%
- 6-10 8%
- 2nd page 7%
From this data it seems that the goal of an SEO campaign isn’t to deliver a particular ranking, it’s to give a site a higher probability of ranking in a certain position. If we can change the probability that a site will rank first from 10% to 30% then we might be seeing the same actual ranking ourselves but we have still increased the overall traffic for that keyword.
As an industry we need to accept that results are going to bounce around every minute of every day and focus on improving the percentage of time we are in the top 3, rather than just looking at the ranking at a given time on a given day. If we can provide a report showing a client then had top 3 rankings 60% of the time in April then that’s a lot more valuable than just saying they rank 2nd when we last ran a ranking report.
Google has always told us to stop focussing on rankings and to focus on traffic instead, with this data they seem to be showing us that a ranking is just a probability rather than an exact number.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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Solids post, Patrick! It’s articles like this one that help frame the story for headstrong clients that insist on clinging to ranking reports as the principle success metric.
By the way, there are a few other solid posts on the new Google Webmaster Tools functionality (disclosure: one of them is mine):
http://www.seobook.com/google-serp-ctr-data-search-rank
http://www.hugoguzman.com/2010/04/hidden-money-keyword-discovery-makes-google-webmaster-tools-a-must-use-for-seo/
More comments from hugoguzmanVery insightful post.
I think the only thing that I’d add to that is that I believe that Google also split-test pages in different positions in order to determine how click-through rates compare with competing pages, hence another reason why pages ‘bounce around’ in SERPs.
I should add that such percentage of time in top 3 is not always represented by the same type of result, meaning the listing itself. It could be achieved by gaining some real estate in the SERPs with a combination of the following (AND / OR): landing page, or a video, or an image, or a product, etc etc (better if AND!).
When it comes to your statement about “higher probability of ranking in a certain position”, this has always been true for important keywords in the long tail, and also for PPC. I have good results for keywords that produce interesting results and revenues for some of my clients businesses between positions 6 – 9 in natural results, and I don’t have to stress out about moving them to the top, while requiring less effort to maintain.
Thanks for sharing your POV Patrick!
Thanks for the great post. I must say I think this represents a really positive shift in SEO thinking. I find it really frustrating that some clients tend to focus on rankings and do not consider click through or conversation rate.
I couldn’t imagine any rational client demanding first ranking on google adwords and not looking at ctr and cpa.
Great post. I was thinking of writing something similar on my blog. I think Google is also showing even more about the way they want us to think. It’s not just ranking, but click-through. Similar to AdWords, they are now giving the marketer the ability to see how well our listing gets clicked. In other words, it’s not just the ranking, it’s the Title and Description and anything else that gets you the CLICK, not the RANK. Interestingly, to be more specific, they give this information to the site OWNER, not the marketer. Pretty sneaky, Google!
That is brilliant! I have always used Google webmaster tools to look at what phrases my sites were showing up for. On its own it was a good tool to show you what you were showing for and what you were receiving clicks. I must admit I had missed this key are of opportunity from Google; I have compiled position, impression, click-through, sale type reports manually so this is going to save me a whole heap of time. Thanks Google for going this and Thanks Blogstorm for making me aware so soon after the update’s release
Enjoyed this post Patrick – I’ve always been of the view that the measure of successful SEO is not rankings, but the volume of traffic you get for target / relvant keyphrases.
Rankings have always been a smokescreen removing attention from the really important metrics of traffic and conversion.
Ok , so every thing is about Traffic not ranking, good post Patrick and will help us!!
This is an interesting read regarding how rankings are seen and how we should all be analysing our click through data. The new analytics technology Google has incorporated certainly allows a more accurate view of your search results, and allows you to see your keywords usage in a new way.
I wonder if this will change the way that SEO in general is sold. As Google says, it’s not about ranking but about traffic, and this certainly allows you to focus on that. This may be reflecting in the terminology of SEO sales.
I will be interested to read the feedback on this subject, and what SEO companies feelings are on this. I will also be interested to read how the rankings compare to the Analytics data.
Great post, we were very excited when we saw this new data and thought the same thing…one step closer to getting rid of ranking reports.
One thing we’ve found already is that the data export function in Google WMT doesn’t give you all the detail so our hope of immediately playing with the data and folding it into reports has slowed because getting all the info out of WMT is tougher than expected.
We are now discussing the idea of creating a program to crawl/scrap the data for the 400+ sites we have in Google WMT because there is so much we can do with it. I wonder if others are considering something similar?
Thanks.
I have seem that this new data in webmaster tools is near to accuracy when we compare with analytic of google… and this new facility has attracted many webmasters to google webmaster tools
great post and great visitors:)
I am probably going to embarrass myself with this question but here goes… How do you come up with 63% landing in the top 3? The numbers don’t make sense.
One of the most important thing to make real dreaming about 1st position of google is diversity of link sources, and all backlinks of course should to be do follow.
Great post, rank checkers are obviously becoming redundant. I was wondering how agencies would report rankings as SERP personalisation increased. Makes more sense to talk in probaability of position rather than quoting fixed rank.
Great post… but to me the indicator is CTR and I think this is what will change everything.
Similar to Adwords – better CTR gives you lower costs, so in Organic better CTR = Higher rankings.
This is surely the way Google are going?
Great post.. This post are very helpful .These very great visitors and use able this.
Nice post ! This may be reflecting in the terminology of SEO sales. He new analytics technology Google has incorporated certainly allows a more accurate view of your search result.
Great post. I was thinking of writing something similar on my blog. I think Google is also showing even more about the way they want us to think. It’s not just ranking, but click-through.
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