Google has defended its right to rank web pages...

Date Published 09/07/2006 - Click here for more recent news

Google has defended its right to rank web pages in any manner it likes in a groundbreaking court case over its search engine results.

 

That well known Search Engine (SE) Google - is presently being sued in California by a parenting website (Kinderstart.com) which claims it lost most of its traffic when its Page Rank (PR) dropped to zero.  Kinderstart claims that its website was downgraded because it is a competitor to Google.  A motion by Google to dismiss the case was heard in California on Friday 30 June 2006, where Kinderstart argued that it competed with Google because it also offers a search facility on its site.  Kinderstart claims that its traffic dropped by 70% when its PR was set to zero.

 

Now folks in the U.S. of A. have a rep for being a bit litigious - but suing Google for (allegedly) zeroing their PR (deliberately?) does seem a bit of stretch.  We can’t imagine for a moment that anybody at the Googlepex ever guaranteed anybody either PR or traffic. However, the principle at stake does raise a very legitimate question about 'searching' in general that troubles many in the web-industry (and not just about Google) and it's to do with how various web / search companies behave, at all levels, with regard to what they guarantee to clients versus what they can actually deliver in the SE business?

 

As a lower-level case in point, let’s look at a service that EASIserv.com (and many other web companies) offers these days: the somewhat inexact science of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  Say you’re thinking of getting some SEO work done on your website - and a seemingly reputable company guarantees you that they will get you a No.1 ‘organic’ (i.e. free) search position ranking in this-or-that search engine.  Should you be impressed by this seeming cast-iron guarantee?

 

The answer to that SEO conundrum always has been, that it is virtually impossible to trust any guarantee of true ‘organic’ listings in any SE for any keyword / phrase, no matter how obscure it might be.  SEO companies just don’t have the total comprehension of the SE algorithms to readily give that guarantee.  In truth, the only people who are likely to understand the (possibly) hundreds of SE impacting factors, and the way that they relate to one another within their mathematical algorithms, is almost certainly going to be limited to the engineers who work for the various SEs - and as far as we know, they're not telling! So, what can reputable SEO companies reasonably guarantee to do for you - and can you trust them to deliver?

 

There are an inestimable number of SEO factors that SEs use in their algorithms to rank pages in their search results (SERPs) - and some in the SEO community, at various times, claim to know most / all of them (depending who you’re talking to) and any guarantee they offer to customers is predicated on that basis.  Here at EASIserv.com, we feel we have an obligation to our clients (not to mention our own business integrity) to build-in as standard the SEO factors that assist a website to index quickly and rank well in search engines (Google Site Maps for example).  So in that respect, we have the satisfaction of seeing most all of EASIserv.com websites routinely being indexed by all the main search engines and our customers consequently getting good SERPs for their preferred keyword / phrases - over a period of time.

 

But do we give out cast-iron guarantees about SEO services? We do not.  All that EASIserv.com can reasonably do, is to show potential customers the track-record of our existing website clients and explain how they are doing - relative to the competitiveness of their chosen keyword /phrase(s) and then leave people to form their own judgements as to whether they’re comforted by that or not. At EASIserv.com we've always taken the view that we'll become successful by helping others to become successful.

 

About half of EASIserv.com new business derives from us being 'organically' found in search engines - so it might be a reasonable test of the EASIserv.com SEO skill-set to check how our own company website www.easiserv.com is faring in the SEs at the moment?  As a Northampton based web design company, one of the keyword / phrases we target is, not unreasonably, web design northampton.  The  SERPs for www.easiserv.com in an eclectic mix of SEs (but of course including 'the big 3' Google, Yahoo!, MSN) for that keyword / phrase on 9th July 2006 are as detailed below:

 

 

 

 

* MSN results

# Ask results

 

NB1:  The results in the table above are accurate @ approx 13:00 hrs on Sunday 9th July 2006 searching from the EASIserv.com office within the UK.  If you want to cross-check or validate the SERPs shown above, you may derive different results dependent on:

• time elapsed (hours /days / weeks) since 13:00 hrs on Sunday 9th July 2006
• which country you are searching from
• if in the meantime any of the SEs has routinely updated their search index.

NB2: To reinforce this aspect of the changeable nature of SERPS, we've reviewed all the EASIserv.com positions featured in the above table, 4 weeks later (on 6^th August 2006) and as can be seen - there's a little movement, up and down, both in the size of the index and in the relative position of EASIserv.com within that index.

 

So by any reasonable measure, from the results above it can be seen that EASIserv.com are doing pretty well for their keyword / phrase "web design Northampton” in a range of SEs and their different search algorithms but with a very strong result in Google - which is the dominant SE of the present time and produces the most results by far. To achieve Google position @ No.2 of over 4m 'organic' results is very pleasing - as you can well imagine.  Incidentally, in terms of our 'organic' traffic relationship to Google - 92% of our 'organic' search traffic presently comes from Google, a further 5% from MSN and only 2.5% from Yahoo!  

 

But, of course, we didn’t get to this level of SE prominence either overnight or by accident. So what helped us? The EASIserv.com domain is over 6 years old, and we have repeatedly made changes to our website deploying a variety of SE optimisation factors over that period of time.  In fact EASIserv.com started to achieve these Page 1 results in early 2004 and have maintained our strong position ever since – tracking and reacting to the various SE changes over that time.  That’s the other thing about maintaining good SERPs – you’ve got to keep on the case and be vigilant to anything that’s going on in the SE world.  Getting good initial SERPs requires great skill and effort – keeping good long-term SERPs often requires just as much, if not more, of both attributes. 

 

An often unpalatable truth to many website owners, is that the SE’s don’t have to index every website out there.  No website can demand to be listed in SEs, or demand to have Page Rank allocated or demand a high position in SERPs.  SEs index websites and SERPs at their pleasure so building websites that follow SE guidelines by incorporating all the factors that give SEs pleasure - is basically what SEO is all about.

 

After reading all of the above, if you’re interested in talking to EASIserv.com about SEO and maybe seeing whether we can deliver the same kind of SERPs performance to your website, for similarly constructed keyword / phrase(s) - then have a look at our SEO services page and if you like what you see then give us a call. Additionally, you might be interested in the paid search advice service (PPC) that EASIserv.com also offer.   

 

Alternatively, if you're not at all sure as to how your existing website is currently performing in  SERPs - you can request one of EASIserv.com's website analysis health checks. Then, with the EASIserv.com report in hand, you can take a view as to whether you want to do anything about it, either by:-

• doing some remedial work on the website yourself (if you can)
• getting somebody else to make changes
• or alternatively asking EASIserv.com to take action for you.

We trust that you've found the foregoing information useful and we'd be delighted to hear from you to discuss any of the many complementary web related services EASIserv.com  provide. And remember, if you're planning a new web site or contemplating the redesign of an existing website, insist on making SEO the most important design criteria, it'll save you money in the long run - now that we can guarantee you!

 

Let's see if maybe we can turn those search engines into find engines - for YOU. 

 

 

>> visit EASIserv.com Search Engine Positioning page

>> visit EASIserv.com Pay Per Click marketing page

>> visit EASIserv.com Website Analysis page

>> visit EASIserv.com Web Design page

>> visit EASIserv.com Web Redesign page

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