In August, 2005, SEOmoz launched the first series of ranking factors. We asked a dozen folks in the SEO world to vote on the importance of over 100 unique factors surmised to be part of the search engines' ranking algorithms. Today, we've released a new version that addresses many of the issues that frustrated users of the first version and updates the series to modern times.
A few of the major changes include:
- We've gone from 12 contributors (plus myself) to 35 participants, spanning a wide range of specializations, geographies and even hat color :)
- The new factors list is specifically geared to Google - we'd love to include all the engines, but it's not fair to ask a voter which factor matters most at all the engines when they clearly have different preferences.
- In addition to the factors themselves, I've asked a few forward-looking questions with multiple choice answers and recorded our panelists' answers
- Rather than attempt to list 100+ factors, I've instead opted for readability and usability. The new factors includes just 55 unique criteria, many of them encompassing several pieces of ranking data. Overall, I think this format is far more valuable for those who have practical, rather than scholarly interest.
- Jeff has updated the design significantly and added some additional functionality to the piece (drop down comments in particular).
One of the most fascinating items for me to observe is the change of the Top 10 most important pieces as ranked this year vs. 2005.
Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2005:
- Title Tag (4.57)
- Anchor Text of Links (4.46)
- Keyword Use in Document Text (4.38)
- Accessibility of Document (4.3)
- Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages (4.15)
- Primary Subject Matter of Site - (4.00)
- External Links to Linking Pages (3.92)
- Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.77)
- Global Link Popularity of Site (3.69)
- Keyword Spamming (3.69)
Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2007:
- Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)
- Global Link Popularity of Site (4.5)
- Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)
- Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure (4.1)
- Age of Site (4)
- Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site (3.9)
- Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.9)
- Keyword Use in Body Text (3.9)
- Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (3.7)
- Topical Relationship of Linking Page (3.6)
The biggest mover is clearly "Global Link Popularity" - which fits very well with evidence we've seen of sites like Wikipedia and other authorities dominating the SERPs. It's also interesting to see "Primary Subject Matter of Site" dropping out, another endorsement of large authority sites ranking for terms and phrases often unrelated to their primary topic. Internal link popularity, anchor text and topical popularity have all remained relatively consistent, but "Age of Site" is a new entrant to the top 10 (despite my personal opinion that it's been important for the last 3 years).
For me, this is one of the most valuable documents on the web for determining how to approach an overall SEO strategy. While the factors may not be perfect, they give a remarkably concise and trustworthy view of what makes a site rank well at Google. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have - please add your thoughts in the comments!
Thanks for all the praise (and errors too) guys, and glad you like it. Let me or Rand know if you find any additional issues and I can take care of them.
Nice Fluxx - very slick design. Love the little changes like turning the SD into a 3 point scale of 'highly disputed, average agreement & high consensus'. That added a lot to the usability of the article.
I'll bet that they are laughing their butts off in the GooglePlex as they read some of the replies. My bet is that the SEOs have underestimated Google's abilities.
Google -" So ..this is how they think; the black, the gray, and the white, all aggregated - Seomoz has never been better".
I'll bet that they are laughing their butts off in the GooglePlex as they read some of the replies. My bet is that the SEOs have underestimated Google's abilities.
You know, I was wondering the exact same thing. All the SEOs have put their cards on the table while Google is deciding not to show
On the flipside, I also wonder if they are also surprised at how many of the smaller items were correct or frighteningly close.
Roadies -
Speaking personally I'm kind of glad they (Google) aren't showing their cards. Ranking is already polluted by the thousands out there gaming the system. Imagine if Google clearly and accurately documented exactly what you needed to do to increase SERP!
That said though, I'm not sure how much longer "security through obscurity" will work. With the rise of institutions like SEOMoz and a general consolidation of the SEO market on the horizon far less SEO'ers are going by the "urban legend" approach (e.g. Bold $$$ on every page!) and instead are getting consistently good information.
Does Google not reveal specifics of its search algorithm because its proprietary, or to prevent abuse of the system by SEOs? And if it's the latter shouldn't the algo be good enough after all this time, PhD's, and money that it shouldn't matter?
In the past google used onpage factors and link factors to determine rankings. Those are easy to reverse engineer. Now with the possibility of using site visitor actions and content evaluation the ability of the SEO to reverse engineer and "understand" will be almost eliminated.
This is good for the web because these new metrics reward sites that are good for visitors rather than simply optimized and pumped for of links.
Lots of people will shoot at this idea because they say it will be easy to manipulate... I don't think that is true.
I agree with both points. More and more sites are participating in Analytics, Adsense, Webmaster Central (sitemaps), Checkout, etc. Google is aggregating user data faster and easier than Alexa or any other metric company ever did. Being able to footprint natural traffic by looking at sites with embedded google code gives Google a huge advantage. They can even closely estimate traffic patterns of sites that don't have any Google code on them just by looking at referrer traffic on the sites that do.
Who knows, maybe they aren't at this point yet, but then again, maybe they are.
Either way, this gives Google a lot of insight as to what sites are "relavent" to a search.
I don't think Google is hiding their cards, more so they are choosing to reveal cards to large Fortune 1000 companies. There isn't anything saying Google has to play by a set of search engine rules.
It is somewhat strange to see a lot of cards on the SEO side revealed in one spot, but I can't argue that it is an interesting read. I know if I was still at superpages I'd be comically sharing stories about the results of what is and isn't right.
Sorry - I have to agree. There are things I know spammers in my old job want to rank for and I hope they never do because they aren't as relevant - offering MFA sites - whereas the old site I worked on was - offering in stock goods from over 200 suppliers all offered at a consistent quality level and with real people behind it. A MFA site shouldn't be able to beat a site offering the actual product or service. The real thing should rank higher.
I get frustrated when searches for something I want (Universal contour body wrap because I'm feeling fat) doesn't return the business itself in the top results. I'm searching for it because I want to find it in order to find a local salon (that's going to cost me $150/wrap approx) - not because I want shopping comparason sites all pointing to the same product I don't want.
*sighs*
But I am lazy and old fashioned. Where I were a lass we had to feed coal to the generator to use the computer and that was as long as the mice powering the screen hadn't died... ;-)
Great article, thanks. What I can see is that some ranking factors are still on the list, just changed places. As SE's are being gamed, some factors get devaluated and some get higher in importance.
Actually, I remember the last one very well. When it came out, I immediately printed it and had it distributed to the people in my department at my full-time job. I was asked into the VP's office for a nice old-fashioned chewing because some of the points did not fall in line with our "corporate strategy." (Big Company = Productivity > Quality)
I am printing many copies of this one as we speak. (Youth + Rebellious Nature > Job Security)
a really important document... and not only for members... this will get seomoz a lot of links!
Great read.
In my opinion n.º 7 should rank higher.
Great work as usual.
Print version?
I can probably get a print friendly version of it up pretty soon. I'll let you know when I do.
How about a PDF version?
I second that, a PDF would be handy.
I have a slight problem believing that the age of a site should hold much weight when it comes to ranking. I understand that it is mainly a "filter" of sorts to ward against those spammy start up sites, but what if a site is one of those but has been online for several years? Does it automatically get extra points just for its age? That is the main reason why, to an extent, I don't value a site's age when I pass my personal "judgement".
First of all, great article. I really get a "newsweek" magazine vibe from the graphics and presentation. Good call to make it its own section instead of just a blog post (though also good call to have a blog post for the trackbacks ;)
RandyH -
I know it's anecdotal evidence but I've seen at least 3 cases in the last six months in my industry(ies) where someone bought a circa 1997-98 domain and rocketed to the top ten in less than two months without exerting themselves unduly SEO-wise.
One case is without reciprocal linking, with 100% of the content duplicated from their existing "flagship" site, with the majority of the site being "norobots" (these two are related), and with only 4 pages out of over 10,000 not in the supplemental index. Because of this in the next two months these guys are going to be #1 (for their previously existing site) and #2(for the new site) for some relatively potent (sales cap of about $100 million/yr and growing) keywords. The kicker is that both of these sites are essentially identical from a content perspective, the difference being one of them has an older domain.
I'm not complaining and implying there's some dirty pool going on, I'm just pointing out that these results are likely directly attributable to the domain they bought. It helps that it was one of those old cyber-squatter "productname.com" domains too.
I think Google might be putting too much emphasis on domain age, but it does make sense to place more trust with things that have been around longer.
When you consider that most businesses fail within the first 'x' years then in a sense having made it beyond those 'x' years says something about that business.
Imagine there are two restaurants. One you've been going to for years, have always liked the food and enjoyed the atmosphere. The other is brand new. You might very well choose the new place, but my guess is the majority would go to eat where they have been all these years.
The known is often a safer choice.
But having said all the above I still think Google puts too much emphasis on domain age.
The domain age emphasis by Google does not make sense to me. A brand new website can have much better and more relevant content then an old one with some stale info. Besides, the domain age filter is only stopping new sites that dont' have money to buy an old domain, which has nothing to do with quality or relevance of content, only with the size of a bank account.
True. I can understand giving a certain amount of weight to the age of a site, but I do think too much weight is given to age. It's true that a brand new domain could be providing much higher quality than an older domain.
I don't mind a little age in the equation though. Like everyone else I'd like to be ranking for every desired keyword within minutes of putting up a site, but I'm fine having to spend some time earning that rank. There is a point though where it becomes weighted much too heavily on age and I think we're there now.
The basic idea of using domain age as part of the equation is ok with me, but it seems to be playing too much of a part in the equation, which is unfair to many sites.
Very good article, the last one was before I found your site here and I hadn't seen this particular article. Very well done, couldn't press ctl+p fast enough.
It's an excellent body of work and the analytical methods and the design were superb. I was proud to be a small part of it. For once, the alphabetical list of experts was arranged by first names so I appreciated the heightened visibility. Of course Aaron Wall took the top spot on that ranking. :)
WOW that came out great. so funny to see how many times the same seemingly minor point was made by at least 3 of the panelists!
Great article - you guys just keep raising the bar.
I'd have to disagree with Russ Jones comments about title tags though:
The research I've seen (from Cornell) suggested that the snippet was actually the most influential (which of course comes from the description tag in most cases).
Am I nit picking? Yes, but it really is a great and more importantly, very practical read.
Your team has astounded us again! You set the standard. Thank you.
I am little concerned about Global Link Popularity (GLP) being ranked at no. 2.
I could think of a hundred black hat and or unethical strategies to abuse GLP, and right now, SEO as an industry is struggling for ethical acceptance and validation.
As I said before, users of SERPs need to maintain a vigil on what they are viewing especially since Google has optimized a large component of search results based on the crowd. 5 out of 10 of the SEO recommendations identified in this reaearch can only be implemented with other people's involvement, which technically has nothing to do with the value of the site or content istelf. We are all being forced to become recommenders, whose value is based on other people's recommendations, and so on.
On the whole I think GLP presents a wonderful opportunity for the SEO industry as a greater need for clients to employ us emerges.
Nice one Rand. Thank you.
I would have to agree with the importance of the "age of the site". Although I do have a question? For us that don't own a site that is older than 1-2 years, how should we go about getting an older domain name?
- Does google erase the clock once the domain name has expired?
- If you buy an expiring domain through services such as snapnames.com will it still carry the age value?
- Does it all have to be under the radar without changing the registration information?
I would like to see some tips on how to go about this.
Thanks,
BJ
Great read and a TON of valuable info! I also really liked how the scoring was done and the concensus was calculated. I've read through it once and plan to go back and re-read again as I'm sure there is a lot of info that I missed the first time.
One thing I did notice is that not all of the responders seemed to understand the directions / scope of the questions, and thus may not have scored each factor appropriately. For example, a number of comments talked about how this factor is used in Yahoo, MSN, etc. and that leads me to believe they didn't understand that the factors were to be scored for Google only.
I think this is much easier to understand than the original - but I read the original on a caffene-deprived evening when I needed chocolate rather badly and none was to be had (hey - for me chocolate comes from a boutique, not the supermarket)
WELL DONE and don't be surprised to see several documents submitted to higher-up over the coming weeks to cite this as authoritative!
:-)
I added a print stylesheet to the Ranking Factors page. Bear in mind that printing from the web is not an exact science, by any means, so they layout won't be super awesome. But it does help readability and some layout issues. Let me know if you find any weird issues.
MUCH BETTER, Thanks for the hard work!
I read the article and I appreciate the work done by all.
I made a short and sweet blog entry over at my site called "It's All About The Links" looking for an explanation concerning a website that has made it into the top 10 for a highly competetive search term. A search on Google for “website design” (without quotations) produces on average around 548,000,000 results. A quick review of that site shows;
Now that I have read the article that you guys put together, I am more convinced of my initial assessment of how that site is ranking.
classa - the number 1 site has 55,000 inbound links and the Page Strength report shows me a 5.5 (with some data points missing - I always say, don't rely on the score, look at the factors). I think that site is ranking fairly appropriately based on the factors described in the ranking doc.
Rand,
I don't think classa was referring to the #1 position, just one in the top 10 (I'm guessing the Austin one), which at first glance, does seem a bit puzzling to say the least.
It would be a pretty interesting experiment to pick a site with first page positioning for hyper competitive terms that doesn't appear to be "overly strong" on the surface and finding what magical powers it has taped into that has elevated it to that position.
identity,
You are correct, I was refering to that particular site.
Rand,
Finerdesign is a strong competitor and rightly so... But, to not be a professional SEM, I am proud of my #6 position for the same term :)
randfish,
Using the page strength tool, it shows the command from yahoo that is checking for a link or a listing in DMOZ. My page strength results show no listing, yet I can be found at
dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Kentucky/Localities/M/Madisonville/Business_and_Economy/
This wasn't my desired category (don't get me started on them).
While I realize that you are using a query command from yahoo, it appears to be inaccurate.
Amazing resource, smooth presentation... I'm a "linkarati" and you just got my vote!
Very Impressive work. These are always worth the read just for everyones opinion and the industry references are top notch - except for not having me.
:)
Cudos!
Wow, very interesting stuff. Definitely has given me a bit to think about and consider on some new projects.
I was about 1/3 of the way through answering the questions when I had to toss down the laptop to deal with an urgent family matter. By the time I got back, it was all timed out. No way was I going to go back and redo what I'd done. Thank you for considering me as an invitee. Maybe next time there will be a "save" option as you go along?
The search engine ranking factors V2 article is totally priceless. Thanks for the hardwork, Rand.
WOW! Great article@ SEO is not an exact science, so every analysis on this background is a good source of information.
Thanks
This is by far the BEST... I repeat the BEST seo article / tool to have on hand when commenting on clients sites and making suggestions on how they can be improved.
Absolutely brilliant work to all those who contributed!
When I first saw all the positive comments, I assumed people were just caught up in the groundswell of "Wow that is cool thanks".
Then I read the article. Fantastic resource - I'm more into optimisation of broader business problems, but this analysis and the detail and the range of contributors. Wow that is cool thanks.
But I do try to add something more than that in my comments:
Using a range of different contributors gives greater spread of opinion and should make the results more reliable. However, given that the rating are subjective opinions rather than hard, measurable numbers such as height, size, time of day etc., there is a risk that differences between the contributors in terms of how they viewed the categories could influence the results.
For example, some contributors may have the same relative view on particular items, but may rank those "3" and "4" respectively. Their average ratings then will be different, and contribute to a decreased consensus on each rating. Another possibility is where each contributors average rating (so the average per contributor, across all categories) is the same, but the variation of ratings given by contributors differs. Thus, some contributors may give many "5"s and many "1"s, whereas other contributors may stay in a safer, more moderate range of "2"s, "3"s and "4"s. These differences could reflect different strength of belief, or could just be due to the subjective nature of the rankings and the subjective nature of the measures.
The results can be adjusted, either for the main results presented, or for an interesting stress test to the approach to see whether the conclusions drawn would differ. If the conclusions are much the same, then these issues can be ignored. If the conclusions are different, then further consideration should be given to what effect these possible distortions have on the results. It may be that after some thought, the original, unadjusted results are considered to be a truer reflection of the contributors feelings - the analysis provides some additional comfort. Comfort is an important thing when basing important business decisions on the results of statistics.
So, on to the possible adjustments. The average rating, and standard deviation of ratings can be calculated for each contributor. Then, the individual ratings of individual contributors are "normalised" by deducting the average score, and then dividing the resultant number by the standard deviation. This will give a measure centred around zero (the average rating will be zero) and with a standard deviation of one. Individual differences between categories now reflects a standardised view of the contributors. If desired, this standardised result could be increased by 5 units so that the results presented match the same scale as the questions.
It does become something of a philosophical question as to whether their is agreement when their actual ratings are different, but in relation to the rest of their views they are giving the same relative score. Again, I'm saying that this analysis may be provide some good insights. Technical analysis should be accompanied by a sense check, and as many deeper understanding and robustness checks as possible.
Having said all of that, I doubt that in this case the results would be much different. Thanks again, Rand and SEOMoz for such a fantastic publication.
This is really interesting too:
SISTRIX Google rankings factors and html elements (translated from German).
Are you planningto release an updated version of this ?
I think we update the Ranking Factors every couple years, so this year we should be planning a new version.
It must be good, becuase I'm assuming that the whole entrie SEO Community is trying to download it, because I keep getting your very nice 404. Always something to learn here.
I'm getting that too. You can view it in the Google Cache:
https://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Elll-XrWWsMJ:www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors+https://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk
Great site, good work lokking forward to more SEO updats...
I will tray it aut right away.
Kind regarsd Jan Sørensen
www.hagenstrandcamping.dk
Another great post Rand...
Its nice to be able to see a comparison with the top 10 ranking factors in 2005/7. I would definatley agree with the age of a domain when factoring SEO.
Some clients often use Direct Mail Marketing campaigns along side web promotion (SEO). Often the lifecycle of the campaigns ususally span for around 6-8 weeks. With the 6-8 weeks available, it often allows me to optimise pages accordingly to ensure at promotion launch, should anyone be searching on the DM phrase, the page is already indexed.
Added to my favourites, along with many other blogs :-)
Shahid.SEO
Finally, a great article!
What I like most about this article besides its list is that there are great authors contributing to each of the factors! :)
Hurray! Thanks, SEOMoz!
This makes for extremely interesting reading and is a great source of information. I'd just like to say that I rank highly for a 3 part keyword whose main word doesn't actually appear in my text but does appear in one decent inbound link. In addition I'd just like to add that in my view validation is highly overrated, many great and popular sites perform horribly on that criterion.
Rand, well done. What an improvement from the last version. After reading your V2 of the Ranking Factors I had a dream. In the dream you visited with in my living room where we discussed the factors face to face. It was kind freaky but cool as well. I am a happily married guy, and I know you are happily engaged. So, I know there was nothing weird. Just freaky.
No, there was no revelation or confirmation from above which factors are Google confirmed. After all it was you in my dream, not Sergey or Larry :). Keep up the good work.
I featured your Ranking Factors in my blog entry today. A comment from you would be considered as an autograph and greatly appreciated. :)
I just checked out the V1.0 of the search ranking factors article at https://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors-2005 and noticed the MS Word download link. Nice, but there is a problem. The Document https://www.seomoz.org/files/articles/search-ranking-factors-2005.doc does not exist on the server (404 Error).
Just FYI.
p.s. and great job with V2.0 I am sure that a lot of people will appreciate it. It helps people to focus and avoid guessing and wrong actions as a result of guessing it wrong. :)
Cheers!
Sorry that I didn't contribute - couldn't get past the survey validation issue for the life of me. Even kept my Mac turned on for 3 days in case the software bug was squashed :)
Thanks for asking me though and feel free to ask again in the future, I'll even dust off my WinXP laptop if it helps :D
I could not help but wonder if Mike McDonald was taking a Digg at anybody in particular over spelling. :-)
Quality! Thanks Rand, I was hoping to see the update soon on this.
Hi,
That's nice information ...Thnaks for this post ..!
I want to little more about SEOmoz rank....?
Discuss how to improve website moz rank fast...?
Will link building services are most important for moz rank..?
[link removed]
Hey Guys! Another fantastic article! I remember when I started out in my SEO days I would constantly refer back to this list. Thanks for the great work in updating it!
I would love to see a downloadable .doc or .pdf
I would certainly agree with Francis Lee that the age of the domain should be higher!
Thanks once again!!
Props Mozers! Great design, layout and content.
Well, better dig in and see what all the fuss is about!
What an amazing resource. It's like Christmas morning all over again. Thanks Rand! You d'man :o)
I just read that, top to bottom. If it wasn't so late I'd read it again straight away. I just emailed the link to my webmaster and he better read it first thing in the morning. Pure Gold!
Rand, I was a big fan of the original doc, and am very excited to see that it was updated for use today. Thanks to you and your team (and all participants) for taking the time to hunt and gather this consensus of data. This published document is one of the Moz's finest so far!
Thanks guys,
Love the layout and design and content, is of course fantastic as well
Cheers.
Easily the most important SEO piece to be released this year (yes, no one else will release anything better in the next 8 months).
I'm going to be shallow and mention that I love the color scheme...very, very nice.
Oh, and the SEO info is top-notch, too. It must have taken a lot of work to put this together. Thank you so much for making it available to everyone!
Big shout-out to our own Jeff Pollard (aka Fluxx) for putting this all together and making it look so pretty and user-friendly.
The power of beard compelled him!
When our (Rand and I) beards combine, we create great things!
Absolutely. Jeff you did a great job putting this together. The aesthetics and usability are much improved over version 1. The drop down to see all the comments alone is noteworthy, but overall a job very well done.
Thank you, Jeff! It looks fantastic. It's so nice when something is both full of great content and sophisticated looking, too.
Jeff did an amazing job. Really, really great. I can't say enough good things about it.
Very nice article and the layout is top notch. It is a really great confirmation to see a lot of these factors being considered so highly by many industry experts.
RandyH: I agree with you to an extent, as a good site is a good site regardless of the age, but for ranking factors the age of a site combined with some of the global factors can be a great formula for success. It isn't the only way to get rankings, but it sure does speed things up.
Great work! I love the way that you calculate the amount of consensus and highlight the controversial criteria.
Agreed I thought the consensus based on standard deviation was a very nice touch.
I love the layout. Clean and simple.
Thanks for the great resource.
What I really like about this website, and this industry, is that it's really helping me to expand my strategy towards a growing base of clients. I have one right now, and I've stumbled up on a possible 3 more. Articles like this are very helpful to my livelihood and I really appreciate you guys.
By the way, what's MSN doing up there in Redmond. I just got a lead to an open job position out there. What's the job market like out there.
-Clif
Unless you're replacing Bill Gates, you may not be able to afford a house, especially if you want to live in the city...
Rebecca's right. The job market out here is alright and the Seattle area's awesome, but housing prices here are ridiculous (still increasing at an average of 11% annually).
Thanks Rand!! This is an awesome resource and has been really helpful in training. Look forward to reviewing the updated version.
Amazing article, great to hear what the SEO dons think about different ranking factors, luv the differences in opinion, nice to hear what everyone thinks about personalization, 10/10.
Admittedly I haven't had time to read it all yet and have only managed a scan. Version 1 of the ranking factors was perhaps the document I learned the most from when first learning SEO. I expect I'll get similar value from version 2.
35 contributors over 12 is definitely an improvement and I like how the group varies more in specialization.
Being able to see more of the comments is also great.
I've been linking to version 1 for a couple of years now and imagine I'll be linking to version 2 just as much if not more.
Brilliantly mindbending as ever.
Having a larger pool of responders was great and hopefully yielded an even more accurate reading.
It might be nice to show each responders numerical vote on each item. While most responses could be determined, some were a bit more cryptic and that designation might make it easier, as well as giving an at-a-glance reference.
It is interesting seeing some of the differing opinions, both in the report as well within the comments. I think it serves as a reminder that there are exceptions to every rule and it is the sum of parts that matters. Title tag remains at the top of the list, but I'm sure we've all seen SERPs where one of the top results didn't even have the search term in the title tag.
I guess the next big challenge is determining relative weight of importance... what trumps what and how much of X do you need to make up for a lack in Y.
Thanks again for a great job mozzers and thanks to the panel of contributors again. This type of collaboration not only yields tremendous informational value, but really brings the industry together.
Thanks to all for compiling this list - interesting to compare these views with my own.
SEOmoz rocks! Wow, thanks for making seo as easy as...............well, baking a cake. At least this is an excellent recipe. Really good job of updating a valuable resource and getting input from some of the best ,even when they disagreed. In fact if they had all agreed about everything, then I'd be worried.
Wow! Rand what a great report.
This will take me days to get through.
I am sure the information here will be invaluable to me and my clients.
I think the comparison of the two lists is really thought invoking.
SEOmoz keep up the good work.
Great research Rand and crew. This will provide online marketing departments a good starting point for discussion.
The Google Ranking Questions section is hilarious. there is little consensus and complete disagreement from all participants surveyed!
Can you guys share more data? I would love to see how individuals voted. For example, could we see Danny Sullivans answer sheet?
This will be a great list to give clients when they ask (what will make us rank better). Though I do believe that point 5 (age of site) should be slightly higher up.
Wow. Some great reading in this. Thanks.
We're translating this in Dutch at the company I work for (Onetomarket) right now, I'll let you guys know when the Dutch version is up!
Thanks for a great article Rand!
Hello,thank you for this great article !A download version will be really great and if you need help for translating into german please let me know.RegardsFrank
Watch out, a new generation of SEO practioners will soon be on the way!
Rand, will you be updating the SEO test?
Good to see the latest version. Thanks!
Great resaource, great work as always from the Moz, and I also greatly appreciate the time spent here by the experts.
thanks.
The update is appreciated. Can we expect to see this every two years?
Also, fire the proofreader who listed "Server is often inaccessible to bots" as the number 8 positive factor and number 1 negative factor in your HTML index.
Yeah - we launched a bit early knowing that not everything was completely proofread. It should be all fixed up by the end of the day.
Wow, so much anger.
I really can't say that I am impressed. Not with the amount of people who contributed to this thing. It seems to be the same old information that you can find on about a million other sites on the web related to SEO..
All this research but yet, why doesn't anyone mention the fact that GOOGLE is an Accredited ICANN Registrar?
Google doesn't sell domains, they are a registrar to get information about YOU and Your Domain. How do you think Google ranks web pages? There is more weight put on the domain, the owner, and probably your own personal or business credit along with the history of your business that plays the most important factor.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have 10 year old businesses have #1 positions on google without having any optimization work at some. Most haven't had a redesign since the late 1990's.
I would give more credibility to Research such as this if it included information that we don't already see on a daily basis. It would just be nice if SEO's would stick to SEO instead of trying to always come up with the Why's and How's things work online.
The factors in this research are far from being correct let alone being accurate.
How bout some specifics then webwonder, what exactly would you like to hear more about?
Excellent article!