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:
Yes,. That is likely. It fills in parts of queries that otherwise are missing.
— Bill Slawski ⚓ (@bill_slawski) June 9, 2021
It was a bad idea for us to frame this (or anything) as a part of a ranking of ranking factors. 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.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 9, 2021
John clarified for me:
Machine learning is fascinating, and weird, but mentioning it in regards to search makes sense. The part I'm just not a fan of is when ranking factors are ranked. Reducing something that complex to a single number provides little value / insight.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 9, 2021
John then dug in deeper on why it doesn't make sense to rank ranking factors:
Where does ranking even start? Understanding a query is massively complex, and determines what will be ranked, but is it a ranking factor? How does treating it as a ranking factor help a site-owner make decisions? It's complex, lots of rabbit-holes, and so dynamic :)
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 9, 2021
Yes! It's like asking someone who studied IR & search for years to rank the most important parts of search. There are lots of things which are important in their own ways, they need to work together, you can't just reduce them to a ranked list.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 9, 2021
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?
(This is why I previously asked for Google Terminology etc. - I think a fair few questions get different answers due to the words used/interpretation etc.)
— Lyndon NA (Darth Autocrat) (@darth_na) June 9, 2021
John's response to those tweets:
If you're really keen on this, I'd recommend the route that Dawn has embarked on -- consuming literature, research, technical presentations, IR videos, etc. It's not light-weight, there's no short-cut, but over time things become clearer.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 9, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
