2 Google Position Questions

[pokerextras]

There are bound to be cases where the models come close to reality.

However, I'm curious about how you track your search referrals. Most people use Google Analytics, which notoriously UNDER reports traffic. It also doesn't report all traffic from other search engines.

Do you monitor server logs? Do you track traffic from other search engines?

The AOL data very closely approximates Google search results as Google has powered AOL search for many years and AOL usually only just slightly filters the Google data (their safe search mode seems to be better than Google's).

I don't find much similarity between AOL/Google referral patterns and those from Bing/Yahoo!.

Just curious. I'm not trying to dispute or disprove what you say. With billions of queries, there is no need to try to carve out egotellectual niches in the data.

Yeah i'm using analytics. I'm strickly quoting the unique visitors from a google search for rakeback though, so the other search engines part won't be a factor.

[Michael Martinez]

Like Randy says, "there are no absolutes in SEO".

If you're working off Google Analytics for your optimization, there are a couple of things you (and everyone else reading along) can try.

First, look at which expressions are bringing in oddball traffic to your site. I'm talking about the low-expectation queries. Any query where you don't rank first and which seems uncompetitive might provide you with more traffic if you just raise the ante a little.

Second, look at which of your pages are not converting. Every Website has some dead weight. Find those pages and re-optimize them for something that will draw in people. You have nothing to lose by fixing or replacing copy that doesn't work.

There is nothing to stop you from ranking first for 1,000 new queries that no one else is optimizing for. That adds up over time.