By Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Search Strategist

Google recently started to show position data in its search results, indirectly admitting that its public disapproval and noted guideline violations on rank checkers has not prevented many companies from using rank checkers to determine what keyword position specific web pages are for organic search.

As the image shows:

Google is now displaying a parameter known as “cd,” short for “click detail,” to place the position number in the search engine result pages. This allows web analytics packages to pull in data for every keyword visit and specify what the keyword position was for each individual organic visit.

As such, this will not only lead to the end of many rank checkers, but will also allow SEO to do a lot more data analysis for segmentation and optimization. Instead of pulling in a general position every day, week, or month via rank checkers, a knowledgeable analytics user can set up advanced filters to pull in this data and align the keyword visit and position.

Nonetheless, this policy change has not yet been finalized for around 5% of search results, with some beta issues as the keyword position parameter (cd) changes depending on whether the page ranking is from the web, image, news, or a sitelink. It remains to be seen whether or not Google will roll this out for all non-logged-in searches, much less whether Yahoo or Bing will follow suit and provide the same amount of information as well.

What this means is one should expect SEO to become more like PPC because modifications can now be more accurately tracked on a granular level. The change will be profound enough that managers should ask the question: can my SEO team track campaign modifications as well as my PPC team? If not, it may be time to upgrade your SEO team’s ability to compete in the ever-changing market.

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Tags: Analytics, Google, SEO, Web Tracking

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.