Search results used to be fairly straight forward now they’re all over the place. I search at home and I get a set of results, I come to work and I get a different set. I search on an IE browser and I get one set, and I search on Firefox and I get a completely different set of results. As far as I can tell, every major search engine now is showing multiple results on different datacenters.

These different search results are really complicating SEO. A lot of SEO is about analyzing and researching competition - those that rank higher than you do in search results - and taking that information and forming a strategy for beating them. Without solid, steady results in the search engines it makes this task a lot more difficult. I know, some will argue that I shouldn’t be chasing the search engine algorithm, but if it’s all about being above the next site in the results, how can I help it?

Another thing is that if I’m in the top five in one datacenter and below the top ten in another it makes it really difficult to measure the success of your SEO campaign. How do I know where I’m really at in the search engine? Are my efforts giving me a top 5 ranking or below ten ranking? Maybe search engines are purposely doing this to make it harder to figure out their algorithms?

Finally having different datacenters makes it really difficult for SEO companies to deal with clients. I send them a report that shows them in the top 5 and they look it up on the internet and see themselves below ten. *sigh* Maybe that’s just the nature of the beast now. It still sucks.

• How to optimize for MSN by Adam Sorensen
• Selecting a Profitable Search Engine Optimization Company
• Search Engine Friendly Table Structure - By Paul Madden

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 11:31 am and is filed under Content Optimization, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.