What is Rank Tracking and Do We Recognise it Anymore? - Search London 2017

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
What is Rank Tracking and Do We
Recognise it Anymore?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
I love rank tracking

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
In fact, SEOs like me are pretty-much
addicted to it

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Rankings are numbers
Numbers give a feeling of confidence

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Rankings are great at showing progress
At providing a comforting feeling from an
earlier time of SEO

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
It’s always seemed easy to benchmark
performance using rankings

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
And makes for a more digestible narrative
during client reporting

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But there are some well-known problems

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
1. Position of organic changes

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
2. Ads are becoming harder to avoid

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
3. SERPs aren’t 10 organic results (and haven’t been for a
while)

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
while)
4. Position 0

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
while)
4. Position 0
5. Personalisation

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
while)
4. Position 0
5. Personalisation
6. Local

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
while)
4. Position 0
5. Personalisation
6. Local
7. Knowledge graph

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
while)
4. Position 0
5. Personalisation
6. Local
7. Knowledge graph
8. Answers

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
while)
4. Position 0
5. Personalisation
6. Local
7. Knowledge graph
8. Answers
9. News

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
while)
4. Position 0
5. Personalisation
6. Local
7. Knowledge graph
8. Answers
9. News
Etc

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Rank trackers have tried to keep up
(in fact they do a good job)

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Rank trackers have tried to keep up
(in fact they do a good job)
But fundamentally we rely on rankings like it is
2012

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
We’re running an experiment
Which might prove the fallibility of
rank tracking

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But it didn’t start that way

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But before we continue…
Some really important
context

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
“Really Important” Context
What I’m not
• interested in commercial rank tracking
• against the rank tracking industry
• an expert in rank tracking
• presenting a complete argument
What I am
• happy for links/beers/constructive criticism
• looking for people to help test these theories
• an SEO looking for better understanding
• mildly paranoid

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Right back to it,
The original question

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
“What does hourly rank
tracking look like”
(compared to daily - the ‘norm’)

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
The answer?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Page one looks fairly stable

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Page two, similar

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Everything else?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But that’s just one keyword, right?
Well...

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Across 1,056 SERPs we looked at, not one of them was
an exact match to the previous hour — that’s 0%
stability.
http://bit.ly/0-stability-in-serps

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But what does it all mean?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Daily
Hourly

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
A better question is
What are we missing on daily that we gain
in hourly?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
These bits are exceptionally noisy

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
There are blocks of 3 - 4 hours
which are “quiet”

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Are we seeing “live” algorithm changes?
New pages being dropped & added to the index?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But! Before we get stuck into analysing what we’re seeing
We’ve got to be really sure we know what
we’re seeing!

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
So now it’s time for...
An overdue word on rank
tracking

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Rank tracking is hard

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Google doesn’t like us doing it

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
And therefore it makes our
lives difficult

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
If you’re an SEO or work with
an SEO, you’ll have seen this:

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Rank tracking is unnatural

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
It leaves a footprint,
Anything that leaves a
footprint can be targeted

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
By this - which cripples rank
trackers

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Google could be screwing with us

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Google could be screwing with us
should

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
So we try a number of things to keep things more natural

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
We use proxies on rotation

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
We randomise time intervals between search & switch
things up

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
We randomise time intervals between search & switch
things up
(commercial rank trackers probably do more)

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But this could be ‘noisy’
It’s also still pretty unnatural

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Is this noise from proxy switching?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But why is this quiet then?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But back to the real point

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
If rankings don’t represent
something consistent - what do they
represent?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Something that can benchmark
& trend performance

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Page one IS pretty stable

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Page one IS pretty stable
So this can be valuable data

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But how can we rationalise this
crapshoot?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Manually verifying anything past
page 2 is highly dubious because
it’s so changeable

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Manual rank tracking may be
possible, but it’s not practical

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Here’s a thought:

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Here’s a thought:
How much traffic past page 3-4 in SERPs is actually
human, how much is bot traffic?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Nope

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
So… we could be making some of these (rankings) up?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
And Google could still be screwing with us?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
There have been suggestions of this...
http://www.seobythesea.com/201
2/08/google-rank-modifying-spam
mers-patent/

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
F U D

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
F U D
FEAR

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
F U D
FEAR UNCERTAINTY

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
F U D
FEAR UNCERTAINTY DOUBT

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
And if that isn’t enough

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
http://bit.ly/invisibile-recaptcha

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
The arms race continues

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
The arms race continues
Google changes, rank trackers
have to find workarounds

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Will rank tracking results
become even less stable?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Or worse… could they cease to
be useful altogether?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
If then, what’s left?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Find a better KPI

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
6% of my clients get ranking reports

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
100% of their reports start with
traffic & revenue-driving info

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Do we ditch rank tracking?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
No

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
It is still one of the best tools we (SEOs) have to
measure our actions

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
In-fact, hourly has been really useful for us so far:

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
1. Far-better at spotting cannibalisation

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
2. Helps more accurately see when tweets/news etc are
included

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
included
3. Measuring speed of indexation & what it does to the
rest of the SERPs

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
included
rest of the SERPs
4. Has the ability to make a more accurate correlation
between rankings/traffic

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
included
rest of the SERPs
4. Has the ability to make a more accurate correlation
between rankings/traffic
(if you assume Google isn’t screwing with us too much!)

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
But there are some
bugs to work out

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
How noisy is the proxy rotation?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
How do you work with that much
data?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Is it worth the extra faff?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Do you want to help us
find out?

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
We’re going to be releasing this
(for free) on a limited basis - if
people want it badly enough

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Something like this - ad hoc

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
http://bit.ly/hourly-tracking
So register your interest below:

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Anything below page 1 is questionable as
to it’s usefulness - measure wisely!
1. We’re using rank tracking wrongly
2. Rank tracking could get less useful
3. Pick better KPIs
4. But use rankings to measure your craft
5. Hourly could add a more surgical approach to SEO
6. We’re going to let a few people try for free
summary

@ChrisGreen87
@StrategiQ
Search London
18th April 2017
Thank you.
@ChrisGreen87
What is Rank
Tracking and Do
We Recognise it
Anymore?
http://bit.ly/search-ldn-rank-tracking

What is Rank Tracking and Do We Recognise it Anymore? - Search London 2017

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