Usually we don’t talk about SEO in this blog, being focused on the paid side as we are, but I had an interesting conversation this week about the use of any of Google’s free conversion tracking tools - AdWords conversion tracking, the Website Optimizer, and Google Analytics. My friend was telling me that their search agency recommended strongly against the use of any of these Google tools because it could be used by Google to change the algorithm regarding natural search results!

I usually heard people being anti-Google-conversion-tracking because purportedly Google would gain too much information about your keywords and what converted for you and would do something “evil” (e.g. raise keyword prices on those high performers) with that info. Now I’m hearing that SEM’s think that Google could use this info on the natural side? Yipes… no way.

Still it got me to thinking about how Google would do something nefarious with the information they gathered from a site’s conversion tracking. Thinking very paranoid-ley here, for one, maybe they could somehow correspond how well a high-organic-ranked page converts to whether or not that site was using AdWords. Then, G. would lower that site’s quality score so that the advertiser would find themselves having to bid higher and higher (e.g. more money for Google) for their keywords in order to maintain higher rankings and good traffic to that high-converting landing page. Or would Google take a high-ranking, high-converting site and tweak their algorithm on the natural side so that this site dropped from a high rank, and the site would be forced to start using AdWords to maintain site traffic?

My head is starting to hurt from all these conspiracy theories… although I do find it hard to believe that Google would actually do something like this. They’re releasing these tools to help advertisers understand their online marketing better, not to hurt marketers or use data to make themselves more money.

Posted in: Google | Web Site Analytics