Would you instinctively mistrust a company that has the top 5 or more search listings?
-
I have seen a few "lucky"(?) companies dominate spots 1-5 of search results. When I see that, I generally go to #6, 7, or even 10 before clicking. My gut reaction is that the company with 1-5 has manipulated content just to pull me in - much like the guys on the streets of NYC or Vegas shoving handbills at you.
Is there any evidence/research/poll about the consumer/user reaction when this occurs?
-
Oh erm..me neither
cough
-
I tend to have serious trust issues in general.
However, I don't normally suspect any problems with sites that the top of the SERPs.
I might have trust issues in the SERPs if I was looking for something like "cheap airline tickets" or "escort services" but I am not looking for either of those.
-
I hope you're right Tom! I'd hate to have to go and start de-optimising
-
As an SEO professional? Yes, absolutely.
As a general searcher or consumer? Well, it's been a long time, but I think you could make a case in saying the opposite is true. "These guys have the top 5 results, they must be legit".
Might be a CS case on this, will see what I can find.
-
One of mine does that for a particular search term...I haven't manipulated anything just followed the best practises of SEO across each piece of content. If I had done any sort of dodgy manipulation, I would have been picked up by panda and penguin.
I hope they are not mistrusted because of it. If it were me experiencing it, I'd definitely remember them and probably look.
Let's face it, all SEO is manipulation of search results! Anybody who follows the best practises is hoping that their competitor is not and will therefore rank below them.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Search console new property not added!
hi, i have 25 properties already added in the console, since this afternoon , i am trying to add a new property (sites.google.com/mywebsite) , i have added a tracking code and i can see it in the source code, but console is saying we didnot find any tracking code.
Search Behavior | | alan-shultis0 -
List all keywords from a website per page in a table??
Hi all, Very basic question I know but strangely cannot find a solution to it? (its 20:40 on a Fri-night! 😉 ) I am working on a website that has over 100 pages and would like to see all the keywords associated with each page maybe in a table report of some kind? Is this at all possible? Heres an example URL KEYWORDS /index.html Moz, Moz local, London /aboutmoz.html Moz. Moz SEO, London and so on....
Search Behavior | | darrenbooy0 -
Image ranking in Google but not in Bing and Yahoo search results
Hello, I have one image from my blog post which is ranking well (ranking in first page for all related keywords) in Google web search as well as image search. Getting pretty good visits from the image result itself for past few days. But this image doesn't appear/rank anywhere in Bing and Yahoo search results. Can anyone tell any specific reason for the same? Any methods to follow? Any solution? Please guide me.
Search Behavior | | zco_seo0 -
Getting People to Leave Product Reviews, When they've reached our site in search of reviews
We have a product review website that has been showing a steady increase in organic traffic. However we seem to be having a disconnect between what happens when a visitor arrives. We essentially want a visitor coming to our website in search of a review, to LEAVE a review for another product they may have used... Any suggestions on ways we might encourage this? We are kind of newbies at this!
Search Behavior | | Sarah_Frantz0 -
How to best figure out synonymous search phrases
I'm curious about synonymous key phrases and competitive key term analysis. I have a few methods for conducting research to find what phrases Google considers synonymous but they are very time consuming. What are some ways to figure this out? An example would be livestock and cattle. Are there any good ways to figure out user intent related key phrases? For example in our niche if someone is looking to purchase something Google often delivers pages with title tags that include the term supplies. Would it be advantageous to optimize for these types of key phrases if the competition is less or should I assume that Google groups exact match and synonym and intent match together when calculating relevancy. Eg I can choose to target livestock or cattle on page. Livestock gets a quarter the search volume cattle gets but has half the competition. Will I be competing against the cattle sites too? If so should I just bite the bullet and target cattle?
Search Behavior | | Punkaj0 -
Keyword Search Historical data?
Is there a way to track the history of keyword search over time. I.E. the frequency of the Google search of the phrase 'unpasteurized milk' from 2006-2012 to see trending patterns.
Search Behavior | | preventionaid0 -
What would make a MozRank jump from a 5 to a 9 in a span of two weeks?
Guten tag SEOMozians! I'm looking for your opinions and thoughts regarding MozRank. I recently noticed a website of mine going from a modest MozRank of 5 to an out of the park 9 in the span of two weeks. Any thoughts on where I might look to see what may have caused such a spike? Cheers, Jonathan
Search Behavior | | creativedepartment0 -
Has anyone yet seen any Search or User benefits from implementing any Schema tags (as in Schema.org) ? Thanks
Schema tags have been around for a while, am really interested in knowing of any noticeable benefits seen by anyone who has had experience of implementing Schema tags.
Search Behavior | | SimonCullum0