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About a month ago, we ran a poll asking Does Google Search Quality Use Data From Other Departments (i.e. Analytics, AdWords, etc)?
I am honestly shocked to see that 82% of those who answered the poll do not believe Google when they say they do not use this type of data for search ranking purposes.
- 82% said Google likely does use data from other Google departments for search quality purposes
- Only 11% feel they do not
- 7% said they likely use only some data
I know many SEOs do not trust Google but this is pretty overwhelming.
I should note, this poll only has 86 responses, which is a very low response rate for our polls.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
This was written yesterday and scheduled to be posted today.
Comments:
Marc Ensign
04/13/2012 12:55 pm
I'm part of the 11%. There is a serious ethical issue if they are using data from let's say Adwords to effect organic ranking. In fact, I don't even think the team that work in the Adwords department should be allowed to even eat lunch with the folks that work on the algorithm...HA! I just don't see what Google has to gain by blatantly lying about it...as a publicly traded company, the king of the hill in search and online advertising, etc. Why would they risk all of that just to piss off a couple of SEO companies? Doesn't make sense. Sounds more like sour grapes on the part of the 82%
Michael Martinez
04/13/2012 05:18 pm
Ignorance leads to fear and superstition. These results should not surprise anyone, really. Simply because we do not know what Google uses for its algorithms, many people will fear the worst rather than hope for the best. That's just human nature and psychologists would probably call it a survival mechanism run amok outside its normal context.
Rachel
04/15/2012 05:17 pm
I can tell you that Adsense department uses Google Search quality data.