Google: Ranking Ranking Factors Is A Bad Idea

Jun 10, 2021 - 7:11 am 3 by

Ranking Google Ranking Factors

Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that it is a bad idea for Google to try to rank its ranking factors. To say content is more or less important than links, or to say one search ranking factor is more important than an other, was a "was a bad idea for us to frame" it that way.

He was referring to when Andrey Lipattsev from Google said in 2016 that content, links and RankBrain (weird one to list as a ranking factor by the way) were the top three ranking factors Google had.

John said on Twitter "It was a bad idea for us to frame this (or anything) as a part of a ranking of ranking factors." John went on to explain "how do you even compare? #/% of queries affected? % searches? % sites? % impressions? We use these internally, but they don't make much sense for users / SEOs."

Here is the context of this conversation on Twitter:

John clarified for me:

John then dug in deeper on why it doesn't make sense to rank ranking factors:

So we should stop ranking ranking factors? I mean, we know ranking factors like HTTPS and core web vitals are "tie breakers" and light weight signals - so where do we stop with the ranking of ranking factors?

John's response to those tweets:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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