On Mathematics, Experimentation and Value
Jeff Ferguson of Amplitude Digital recently authored a piece entitled “Do We Have the Math to Truly Decode Google’s Algorithms?” on the venerable Search Engine Journal with substantial assistance from Data Analytics Consultant Jennifer (Fields) Hood. Please read the article before continuing with mine. While the article has much to commend itself, I believe that it presents faulty logic, mischaracterizations, and ultimately misleading conclusions. The answer to the question “Do we have the math to truly decode Google’s algorithms” is an emphatic No. However, the primary culprit behind this unfortunate reality is not the incompetency of industry practitioners chiseling away at the algorithm, rather the algorithm itself now...
SEMRush vs Moz Link Index Re-verified, Data Provided
Mea Culpa: It looks like I screwed up the exported CSVs from my code below. Thank you to Malte Landwehr of SearchMetrics for finding the bizarre issues. Having an unbiased 3rd party (especially of high reputation like Malte) review is hugely helpful. Malte also identified a high % of .jobs domains in the random data set. Because some crawlers have difficulty with the new TLDs, (I am not sure if this is true of SEMRush), I limited the Domains and URLs to .org, .net, and .com. There were no meaningful changes in the outcomes of the reports EXCEPT for Total Referring Backlinks to URL, in which Moz wins 2x rather than 6x. Comparing Domains [XLSX] Comparing URLs [XLSX] I often do not post data along side these mini research projects such as my most recent brief...
SEMRush and Moz Link Indexes Compared
Historically, Moz has internally tracked comparisons with both Ahrefs and Majestic on a daily basis to ensure our Link Explorer product is a market leader. However, I have received several requests recently to compare Moz to SEMRush given their strides in growing a link index of their own. Below are the results of a simple study comparing index size based on the following metrics: Overall reported backlinks (Self Reported) Likelihood Moz or SEMRush reports more referring domains to a domain (Sample Size: 1000 domains) Likelihood Moz or SEMRush reports more backlinks to a domain (Sample Size: 1000 domains) Likelihood Moz or SEMRush reports more referring domains to a URL (Sample Size: 1000 URLs) Likelihood Moz or SEMRush reports more backlinks to a URL (Sample...
Keyword Volume Relational Accuracy
First, quick disclosure: I am Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist at Moz and I work directly on the model that predicts search volume. It is impossible to know the exact search volume for a keyword in Google. The methodologies available to us (Google Adwords Keyword Planner, Traffic Estimator, and Google Trends) are all problematic in one way or another. But this doesn’t mean we are hopelessly lost regarding our predictions of search volume. One thing we can analyze is the relationship between keywords rather than their exact volume. For example, Google Trends doesn’t provide us the exact search numbers, but it does provide us a comparison of keywords. Theoretically, the relationship between 2 keywords in Google Trends (lets say 3:1 because keyword...
The Hysterical State of Google Keyword Volume
With the latest news that low-spend advertisers will now get broad volume ranges rather than traditional keyword volume in Google Keyword Planner, I couldn’t help but laugh. I won’t pretend that I have always given Google the benefit of the doubt, I’ve certainly criticized the company many times, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not. But this is so hysterically bad that I just had to step back and point out how ridiculous it has become. There are basically 4 different sources of keyword search volume data that you can get from Google. Google Keyword Planner Google Traffic Forecaster (inside Keyword Planner) Google Trends Google Search Console I decided to take just 1 keyword and see how things are looking… Keyword Planner Original...
Can I Rank for This Keyword?
One of the most common questions that search engine optimizers, agencies, and webmasters come upon when doing keyword research is “can I rank for this keyword?” It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Knowing all of the factors is nearly impossible, and going through one-by-one against the competition can be difficult, especially if you want to check a lot of keywords and simply exclude all those that are out of reach. Well, in this video I walk through a very simple way to find this number in Keyword Explorer by using all your rankings data from Google Search Console to inform you as to what keyword difficulty level you can attain. I walk you through a handful of simple steps… Getting keywords from Google Search Console Filtering...
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