Post by account_disabled on Feb 27, 2024 1:38:13 GMT -5
The migrations pre. Will Critchlow talked at SearchLove San Diego about how Googles algorithms are at a level of complexity and opaqueness where theyre no longer even trying to understand them themselves and of course there are numerous stories of unintentional behaviors from machine learning algorithms out in the wild. Thirdparty correlation studies Its not difficult to put together your own data and show a correlation between linkbased metrics and rankings. Take for example Mozs most recent study in showing strong relationships between linkbased factors and rankings across the board.
This more recent study by Stone Temple Consulting. However these studies fall into significant Kazakhstan Phone Number issues with correlation vs. causation. There are three main mechanisms which could explain the relationships that they show Getting more links causes sites to rank higher yay Ranking higher causes sites to get more links Some third factor such as brand awareness is related to both links and rankings causing them to be correlated with each other despite the absence of a direct causal relationship Ive yet to see any correlation study that addresses these very serious shortcomings or even particularly acknowledges them. Indeed Im not sure that it would even be possible to do so given the available data but this does show that as an industry we need to apply some critical thinking to the advice that were consuming.
However earlier this year I did write up some research of my own here on the Moz Blog demonstrating that brand awareness could in fact be a more useful factor than links for predicting rankings. Source The problem with this study was that it showed a relationship that was concrete i.e. extremely statistically significant but that was surprisingly lacking in explanatory power. Indeed ended up with a correlation that was far lower than Mozs for Domain Authority. Fortunately Malcolm Slade recently discussed some of his very similar research at BrightonSEO in which he finds similar broad correlations to myself between brand.
This more recent study by Stone Temple Consulting. However these studies fall into significant Kazakhstan Phone Number issues with correlation vs. causation. There are three main mechanisms which could explain the relationships that they show Getting more links causes sites to rank higher yay Ranking higher causes sites to get more links Some third factor such as brand awareness is related to both links and rankings causing them to be correlated with each other despite the absence of a direct causal relationship Ive yet to see any correlation study that addresses these very serious shortcomings or even particularly acknowledges them. Indeed Im not sure that it would even be possible to do so given the available data but this does show that as an industry we need to apply some critical thinking to the advice that were consuming.
However earlier this year I did write up some research of my own here on the Moz Blog demonstrating that brand awareness could in fact be a more useful factor than links for predicting rankings. Source The problem with this study was that it showed a relationship that was concrete i.e. extremely statistically significant but that was surprisingly lacking in explanatory power. Indeed ended up with a correlation that was far lower than Mozs for Domain Authority. Fortunately Malcolm Slade recently discussed some of his very similar research at BrightonSEO in which he finds similar broad correlations to myself between brand.