If you’re near Newport Beach CA and are looking for information about a restaurant called “The Crab Cooker”, Danny Sullivan thinks you have a problem. I say Danny’s wrong.
Of course, all that matters is what Google says.
In this post on Twitter, Danny, a highly-regarded Search Engine Optimization and Marketing guy, looks at the picture you see above and states that there’s only “2% of the search result page” for The Crab Cooker devoted to that restaurant’s web site. And literally, he might be correct; take a look at square inches of screen real estate and that small measurement might well be what points directly at The Crab Cooker’s web site.
So what? I’m way more worried that even if you search for ‘The Crab Cooker’ from here all the way on the other side of the country, you still get pretty much the same results.
To Danny’s original point, I see a misdirect of what’s important; assuming that you are looking for The Crab Cooker of Newport Beach restaurant by typing its name into a search engine, the results Google is returning are really, really likely to get you to the right place. It’s actually a great representation of what’s right about Google’s attempts at implementing artificial intelligence through their Knowledge Graph and the new Hummingbird search algorithm. But there’s also plenty about the way Google organizes search results that you should worry about, like how they treat restaurant reviews and the fact that Google is buying up so much of the Internet’s data that they can manipulate what you see when you search to their own benefit. There’s no doubt; we need a better way to understand search results.
But “there’s only 2% accuracy here”? Sorry, Danny, you’re wrong. There’s HUGE accuracy; thinking like a traditional search engine optimization guy is leading you down the wrong road.
Speaking of which: have you tried a search for ‘beyoglu takeout? It’s why optimization works, but the subject is in flux:
Complicated stuff, I know. So what can you do about it? You know the answer …
