Google’s recent attempts to block automated ranking software such as WebPositionGold has ignited a fairly hot debate on the value of SEO ranking reports. The latest hot post on the topic was delivered by Search Engine Journal’s Stoney DeGeyter and was titled An End to Ranking Reports is an End to Analysis.
Commentary: Sensationalist titles aside, Stoney opened with an extremely valid premise. Namely, that ranking reports are suspect.
The main problem with ranking reports is that they don’t necessarily reflect a true “ranking” especially in Google. Because of multiple data centers, geotargeting, personalization, etc…most search results vary from day to day. Moreover, unless rankings are tracked daily, they offer only a slice of the overall ranking trend. There various other statistical shortcomings that we can get into if anyone is interested (such as the fact that universal search elements often skew the value of a top 10 result by pushing natural results further down the page) but this aforementioned elements devalue ranking reports enough to make them little more than an afterthought in the grand scheme of analytics and reporting. And if you’re an SEO shop, you have to factor in the opportunity cost of running and analyzing the reports, both internally and with the client.
My question is always regarding how your time is better spent: an hour analyzing rankings or an hour spent building content, building links, analyzing analytics data, etc…
Viewed in this light, ranking reports become that much more insignificant.
Marketing Value: It’s important to think through the various facets of SEO-related analytics elements (rankings, visits, conversions, revenue, etc…) but I would caution against spending too much time analyzing the value of running automated ranking reports. Our Zeta SEO team still runs them as part of our InsightGrit reporting platform, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg in terms of our approach to SEO analytics.
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