SEOs rule the Search Engines vs. Search Engines rule SEOs

[Nacho]

From an earlier thread (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1642) that we where talking about search engine optimizers and Google, it kinda started to take direction on this topic. So, let's discuss.

SEOs rule the Search Engines vs. Search Engines rule SEOs

This does not apply to one search engine in particular, but our industry as a whole.

Which is it?

Note: Please don't forget to vote in our poll and "Rate this Thread" at the bottom. Thanks!

[Anthony Parsons]

For the stated question: SEO's rule the search engines IMO! Spammers probably rule them more so than we do.

I think of it something like this; If there was only one search engine, it has no competition and would become complacent and boring. If nobody could taint a website to react within the rankings, then the rankings themselves would become boring and useless. Again, no competition. Competition keep us all providing quality IMO, the search engines against each other, SEO's against one another, and SEO's vs. Search Engines.

Is it wrong to taint a website to perform for its relevant terms? No. Its the spam that becomes the problem. I would still love the day when the engines release an alternating algorithim pattern on rankings. Rankings fluctuate and vary on a daily basis around hundred or thousands of changing variables. Makes it kind of hard to taint anything then.

Which is it? Any sole PPC engine. You can't taint something that relies upon completely paid results!

[4eyes]

Where is the 'nobody rules anybody' option ?

[Nacho]

I forgot to say . . . We must look at this as reality, but not as a battle in the negative aspect where one wants to destroy the other. There is no battle and no destruction, but rather SEOs can figure out the search engines algorithms and therefore control the SERPs or search engines can easily move their algorithms to give other websites more relevancy and therefore the "expert" SEO's SEPRs can go down the tubes very fast (think of the past Google Dances for example).

IMO, one should be able to take one side or the other, but not down the midde (neutral position). However, if you strongly feel this is your side please present your case and point.

[Anthony Parsons]

I think that was a good choice from Nacho, just quietly, that no fence sitters option is allowed.

[4eyes]

No - not fair.

The middle path is not as you state it.

The middle path is that nobody 'rules' anybody. ie that the battle for superiority is still in process.

Without that option the poll is meaningless.

[added]
Why ask a question and then limit the answers to prevent people stating what they really think? - Bizarre

[Nacho]

Why ask a question and then limit the answers to prevent people stating what they really think? - Bizarre
That is very true and I respect everyones opinion very much . . . so I will allow it. I did not see it that way when initial posting, so I apologize for any misunderstanding. I will edit my previous post to avoid confusion on the thread's rules.

[rustybrick]

What about who rules the searcher?

Do Search Engines Rule the Searcher?

OR

Do SEO's Rule the Searcher?


The searcher rules who? Poor searcher, or not.

[AussieWebmaster]

Though SEO's have skills they are limited by the actions of the engines... we can't chnage the engine but they can change what we do!!!

[Nacho]

Do Search Engines Rule the Searcher?

OR

Do SEO's Rule the Searcher?

Good point, Barry. You should start another thread on that topic, so that we can keep this one about SEOs vs. Search Engines.

[rustybrick]

Its ok, more of a philosophical question. No poll needed. Sorry for going off topic, slightly. ;)

[Nacho]

Perhaps one way to see this is by looking at who controls what.

SEOs (which includes all web developers) control:

Website's information
Design structure
Linking
Where site is hosted (along with other off-page factor stuff)
User's website visit (time length) up to a limit point depending on each site, of course.
Ability to manipulate user's preference to come back to the site w/ out having the user go though a search engine again (e.g. good branding, bookmark this site, newsletter sign-up, etc.)
And probably many other factors, just to name a few

Search Engines control:

What content they spider and index
Algorithm to manipulate SERPs based on relevancy
Massive volumes of traffic
The way they display the search results.
And probably many other factors, just to name a few

Keep in mind, that whatever the level of quality (SEOed or not) in the website spidered and indexed, the search engine must determine if it is relevant to the user.

Just a few more things to consider.

[seomike]

I'd have to say that the SE's rule any of you clowns that do conventions about them or seminars that preach the search engines are your friends hoopla... Now on to optimizing meta tags! HA! :D

On the other hand they need us to make them legit. I still haven't ever seen my royalty check from Google or any other SE for their use of my copywritten content so they can make money off of it by putting advertisting in their SERPs.

I've been monitoring a cloaked site in Google for over a year now to see if all the "you'll get caught" mumbo jumbo was true. I'd have to say that guy has the SE's by the cohones because he's in control and the SE's have yet to penalize that site. I think that is the essence of SEO winning vs. SE.

1. His style is protected from prying eyes. (execpt for when Y switched to ink and I saw his cloak for about a month before they put in a nocache meta that was for all spiders and not just for G :) ahhh sucka I studied you!)

2. He doesn't have to worry about any fool SEO jacking his content that makes him rank and using it against him. ( I think the nigritude ultramarine cloaker that copied down the page one sites in the SERPS scared a few people into realizing that "what makes me rank can make me penalized". After all, all he did was take an exact copy of their pages and put them up on his site in pages that had higher PR thus making the original sites get a dupe penalty" LOL I thought it was brilliant. First time I ever saw google eat their own jargon that a third party site can't ever hurt you. Ha tell that to the people that got bumped out of the race hehe.)

Ok that enough for now.... :rolleyes:

[Nick W]

I'd have to say that the SE's rule any of you clowns that do conventions about them or seminars that preach the search engines are your friends hoopla... Now on to optimizing meta tags! HA!


I like seomike, he's one of us ;-)

Nick

[andrewgoodman]

Since this poll does not capture the trends in the SEM industry in all their complexity, I respectfully decline to answer. But I will babble on a bit.

Search engines have found good ways of forcing COMMERCIAL sites to pay for exposure. There is no way anyone can tell me that optimizers truly have the upper hand on Google right now. You can get in the index, but to get the pages you want seen, seen by the right people, is very difficult. Unless, of course, you pay.

I just tried typing in about 40 different queries for the potato chip called "Miss Vickie's," a popular favorite here in Canada. Small company that got bought out by Frito-Lay.

It's impossible to find official corporate pages on this product, so you get a few mentions on message boards and such. The top site about Miss Vickie's is some unrelated lady with pressure cooker recipes. Depending on which query you type into Google, you get some internal pages (very ugly) from the Frito-Lays corporate site (eg. this one which just lists "onion-free products").

http://www.fritolay.com/consumer/dietary/onionfree.html

I lean towards saying: SE's are getting the upper hand. It's a good thing, too, because no one would use them if the rankings were just optimization contests.

But this leaves plenty of room for a good SEO to fix clear problems with corporate sites that hinder basic SE visibility. Corporations and small retailers alike are collectively leaving billions of dollars in sales on the table because they have a poorly-designed site, out of which Googlebot spiders the "wrong" pages, etc., leading users down blind alleys. SEO is still worth a bunch, but it is not, and should not be, about getting the "upper hand."

Oh, I forgot to mention, would it kill Frito-Lay to run an AdWords campaign to maximize their exposure? Oh I know, I know, they "own" those product names, and they're just too "good" for PPC. After all, shouldn't they rank first on that phrase? "Who can we hire? Bring in those whiz-bang SEO kids!"

Fact is, maybe they'll never rank as well as they like, because the search engine has the upper hand.

Gotta go. I'm hungry.

[Chris Boggs]

my vote was that neither rules the other.

here's why:

Let's not forget the very important third player in this equation: the searcher.

As more and more people use SE's, queries will become more relevant, enabling the SE's to provide more relevant answers. Since SEO's stress relevance, especially in cases where geographical limitations exist, we sometimes have to wait until the average "local" searcher catches on to properly using SE's. I had it fairly easy in San Diego because so many searchers automatically used "san diego" within their queries. Other big cities have this luxury as well.

As it was mentioned in one of the panels at SES, 3-word and greater searches are becoming more commonplace as searchers learn. Right now, we "compete" with other SEO's and against the search engines for the 1 and 2 word phrases only, and SE's try to stop various SEO methods. This will become less important, IMO, as searchers continue to "rule" all of our behavior.

[seomike]

I think we should start a new poll along the lines of "Do you think search engines like SEO's" with a simple yes, no?

or

Do we make SE ranking algorithims look good?
Yes - SE's compensate us for spicing up their boring results. :D
No - The algorithims could produce the same quality of results without our help. :eek:

[Anthony Parsons]

Kick them off mike.....sounds like a good question to me.

[randfish]

I think I'd have to say that nobody 'rules' anybody.

Search engines provide a service, we provide a service. Our optimization actions are RULED by their perceptions of relevance while their algorithms and engineering work is RULED by our spam, optimization, etc.

It's just a back and forth game, the only ruler is the public and if they suddenly decide that openmoz.com is the best search engine, well, we'll all be optimizing for them and GG, Y! & MSN will be RULED.

I don't think Google 'likes' SEO, but Y! & MSN seem to. I think Yahoo and MSN's public face is more forward thinking and appropriate - treat them well, show them the way, reward them and do it while providing relevance. GG is more of an antagonist with SEO, maybe because they are the biggest, or maybe because they are always trying to fight SEO rather than embrace it, use it and still spit out relevance.

I think GG probably feels that the other engines are overloaded with spam and is trying to think of a clever way to dodge it.

[littleman]

Truth is we have a symbiotic relationship even if no one wants to admit it. We need them and they need us even if they hate us.

[St0n3y]

I see it more as a "chicken and the egg" question. SEOs manipulate sites to rank well, SEs change the algorithm to week out manipulation. It goes round and round, neither dominant over the other. IMO.

[fathom]

Truth is we have a symbiotic relationship even if no one wants to admit it. We need them and they need us even if they hate us.

A wise man once said, "you can learn alot from littleman"... I did, I do, I will, and likely for a long time to come.

His statement says volumes - succinctly! ;)

[sharad]

randfish:I think I'd have to say that nobody 'rules' anybody.

Search engines provide a service, we provide a service. Our optimization actions are RULED by their perceptions of relevance while their algorithms and engineering work is RULED by our spam, optimization, etc.

I agree with him.

[sharad]

rustybrick:
Do Search Engines Rule the Searcher?

OR

Do SEO's Rule the Searcher?

I think search engine rules the searcher. Although SEO influence the search results but search results depends upon the policies of different search engines. An SEO have to work according to the policies of search engines and we can't rule the search engine.

[Sebastien Billard]

I truely agree with the symbiotic relation, and if littleman didnt posted it, i would have done it :) SEO is a 3 persons relation : website, SE, and user. Harming one of them is harming the whole. Simply interdependancy. It doesnt mean one cannot use the ressources of the other for his own benefit, but it should be done without harming, or symbiosis become parasitism.

[St0n3y]

Here is another way to look at it: who can do without who?

Can the SEO survive without the Search engine? No.
can the search engine survive without the SEO? Definately

If its gonna tilt one way or another, I would have to say the SE rules the SEO.

[AussieWebmaster]

Here is another way to look at it: who can do without who?

Can the SEO survive without the Search engine? No.
can the search engine survive without the SEO? Definately

If its gonna tilt one way or another, I would have to say the SE rules the SEO.
Can the search engine survive without the SEO? well it could but it then reverts to the mismash of results of the beginning of search engines... seo helps the engine ... while some people use methods that are not benefical these are really not seo more ses (search engine spam)

[St0n3y]

it then reverts to the mismash of results of the beginning of search engines
I don't know if I necessarily believe that. You certainly could be right, but I think the search engines may disagree with you.

[AussieWebmaster]

I don't know if I necessarily believe that. You certainly could be right, but I think the search engines may disagree with you.

what do they have to pull from if total black hat or no seo is done?

[St0n3y]

I would say they pull from whatever content each site contains. Look at it this way: Does Network television need the Ad/Marketing agencies to survive? No, they would simply rely on each business putting together their own ads. Sure, the ads would be a far less quality, but the point is, it can be done.

If no SEO existed then the search engines would do as they originally did, pull content from sites and evaluate links. Much the same as they do now.

Of course, both these points are moot, in that you will never have commercials without somebody trying to make money creating those commercials, nor will you have to search results without somebody manipulating sites to attain those top positions.

But in a question of who can survive without the other, clearly the search engines can survive without SEOs, but not the other way around.

Another way to look at it is this: If search engines ceased to exist tomorrow, SEOs would die out as well (except those who focus on other marketing aspects). If SEOs ceased to exist tomorrow, search engines would not be harmed in any way.

[AussieWebmaster]

Another way to look at it is this: If search engines ceased to exist tomorrow, SEOs would die out as well (except those who focus on other marketing aspects). If SEOs ceased to exist tomorrow, search engines would not be harmed in any way.

What I think is the Search engines would not have the popularity they have now if not for SEO. As much as the engines have tried to improve their relevancy, the greatest part of that has been done by the SEOs.

SEO took the engines out of the wild west days and brought it to a more organized and civilized arena.

[St0n3y]

SEO took the engines out of the wild west days and brought it to a more organized and civilized arena.

Good point, but who is to say that it would not have happened without SEOs anyway? For the sake of argument, lets say it would not have. That was yesterday, but today, SEs can survive just fine without SEOs. The advent of PPC ads certainly helps that case along as well.

[AussieWebmaster]

Good point, but who is to say that it would not have happened without SEOs anyway? For the sake of argument, lets say it would not have. That was yesterday, but today, SEs can survive just fine without SEOs. The advent of PPC ads certainly helps that case along as well.
Okay white flag... no more Devil's advocate!

[Chris Boggs]

lean back... So now I am leaning more towards the importance of the SEO's, thanks to our Aussie friend.

Without the SEO's, there would be less well-structured and content-rich sites within the Internet for the SE's to pull from. Therefore search results would not be as good, and less people would use search engines. If that happened, would it have been possible for Google to break into the public domain and rise in value so consistently? How many fringe search engines would never have even existed?

Although I do believe that SEO's are more important than I originally thought in this thread, I do stick to my guns about the "uber-importance" of the searcher to all parties involved.

[St0n3y]

If your theory is correct, it sounds like google should have cut every SEO in on the IPO... afterall, we made them successful.

;)

[Serio]

If it wasn't for SEO the designers would have talked our clients into Flash sites years ago and the search engines would not be half as good as they are now.

Agree with St0n3y - we have been the SE's unpaid beta testers for years.

[AussieWebmaster]

lean back... So now I am leaning more towards the importance of the SEO's, thanks to our Aussie friend.

Without the SEO's, there would be less well-structured and content-rich sites within the Internet for the SE's to pull from. Therefore search results would not be as good, and less people would use search engines. If that happened, would it have been possible for Google to break into the public domain and rise in value so consistently? How many fringe search engines would never have even existed?

Although I do believe that SEO's are more important than I originally thought in this thread, I do stick to my guns about the "uber-importance" of the searcher to all parties involved.
Wow has been awhile since I won someone over to my side... thought the deep voice and the Darth Vader mask scared everyone away...

I agree that ultimately the value is in the searcher... traffic is the king (not content as many people suggest)... it is the basis of all things... and provides the economic force that propells the internet.

So who gets the credit for all the people? I know Al Gore tried to lay claim... and AOL would be a factor in starting the simple access allowing people to building skill sets... or was it bad TV and the lack of reading skills that got games and porn so popular so quickly?

[Chris Boggs]

Wow has been awhile since I won someone over to my side... thought the deep voice and the Darth Vader mask scared everyone away...

What I heard was just like darth...it's when the mask is off that people are scared :D

So who gets the credit for all the people? I know Al Gore tried to lay claim... and AOL would be a factor in starting the simple access allowing people to building skill sets... or was it bad TV and the lack of reading skills that got games and porn so popular so quickly?

Society's growing trust of the Internet is what has helped traffic, IMO. I remember when it was a chore to get people to even call from a website "call to action," let alone fill out a lead form. now people are more comfortable with the Internet. This is thanks partially to the SEO for helping provide the SE's with more relevant content and also thanks to the wonderful system of free enterprise (enforced by strict laws and the ability to track scammers). Fear of going out into the crime-laden world probably helps too ;)