The Scientists of Search Engine Optimization

by Michael Martinez on January 13, 2009

I have set out to write this article twice over the past few months and both times I have gotten bogged down in frustration.

What is a scientist?

How does one go about identifying search engine optimization scientists? Most people would probably not agree on a specific definition for “scientist” (certainly, the definition confuses Google).

I like the simple definition of “a person who studies natural phenomena in a systematic manner”. But even that is a problematic definition. Many people would be considered scientists simply because they follow racing forms, sports league statistics, and the price of gasoline in a systematic manner. Why? Because all human activities are natural phenomena. It cannot be otherwise unless human beings are unnatural.

What is science?

We study ourselves, our behaviors, and the effects of our technologies in many systematic ways but we’re not scientists. Some of us are scientists. Some of us are obsessive-compulsive. The rest of us fall somewhere in between those two extremes.

Search engine optimization owes a great deal to informal study consisting mostly of random experimentation, observation, and broad discussion. Our communal SEO wisdom is well established, but it’s also extremely tarnished. In fact, conventional SEO wisdom is wrong more often than it is right, but not for any single reason.

Wisdom is not science. Science, in my opinion, is the systematic acquisition and organization of knowledge through observation, experimentation, and analysis. Some people might correct that to “experimentation, observation, and study”. Wisdom grows with experience but wisdom can explain things in the wrong way. Wisdom gives rise to myth and myth gives rise to conventional wisdom.

How much formal education is there for search engine optimization?

There are few if any real academic programs that teach search engine optimization. Sante Achille teaches search engines and Web marketing in Italy (he is also a member of the SEMJ editorial board). I’ve found references to a few similar educators but I could probably count them on one hand. And with all due respect to those Web marketers who teach at the university level in any capacity, were I to consider seeking a degree in search engine optimization (assuming one were available), I would approach it with great skepticism.

There are certainly a great many Information Retrieval scientists, and Library Scientists, and people we could probably call Webometric Scientists. These and related fields have contributed much to the technology that we use. And they have written a heck of a lot of research papers and search technology patents that you, I, and Bill Slawski have read.

But that doesn’t make them search engine optimization scientists.

Is the SEO community ready for science?

The SEO community still defends search engine optimization as being more art than science. That kind of apologetic attitude doesn’t do much for building credibility in the part that is supposed to be science. But the stumbling block for all of us is that there are really no jobs for search engine optimization scientists.

Nor are there any professional or academic credentials. I’m not sure the field is well-regarded by the established academic disciplines. Dr. Edel Garcia has, for example, taken some of the best-known SEO bloggers to task for misusing IR terminology. I’ve seen some SEOs try to argue with him but, frankly, I felt he was blowing fish out of the water with a shot gun, maybe a small cannon.

Shari Thurow, a professional Web marketer, has studied Library and Information Sciences with a specialty in information retrieval at the Master’s level. Shari, too, has jumped on the SEO community with stern admonishments for the liberties they take with both language and procedure.

Do we have any SEO scientists?

Both Dr. Garcia and Shari Thurow have been engaged in professional search engine optimization. They probably come about as close to being SEO scientists as anyone in the field can. But is that all there is?

I’ve looked at a lot of people who are well identified with the fields of search and search engine optimization. For reasons both too diverse and too numerous to list here, I’ve rejected virtually all of them as models for search engine optimization scientists.

There are, however, a few people who through their meticulous research and constant publication (through blogs, white papers, or whatever) have impressed me in one way or another. Here are my choices for Potential SEO Scientists:

Phil Bradley, librarian – Who? Phil Bradley. He brings 20+ years of applied Library Science experience to the Web. His Web site is an amazing resource (and extremely simple in design, thank God!). I have never in my life found such a large list of search engines. Is he the brightest light in the field? Of course not. In fact, many SEOs might disagree with some of his ideas (I’m sure they would). But he brings an experienced librarian’s perspective to the field of Web studies and his articles are well worth the read. His blog is interesting, too.

Marie-Claire Jenkins, SEO blogger – I have only recently learned about Marie-Claire (from Dave Harry’s impressive SEO Higher Learning post). A Ph.D. student in Computer Science, her blog seems to be well reasoned and articulate. But I’m not sure she is what I would call an SEO Scientist. Time will tell.

Peter Meyers, usability – Dr. Peter Meyers is a trained psychologist who specializes in Usability. I bookmarked his site not long ago because his articles impressed me as being well-thought out, articulate, and easy to follow. If anything, he’s just a bit lite on the content but he has a business to run.

Jakob Nielsen, usability – Dr. Jakob Nielsen excites some occasional bitter controversy with his Usability studies. Not everyone in the SEO industry agrees with his ideas. Nonetheless, his articles have effected profound changes on the way Web marketers work more than once. He is a pioneer in Web site design and cannot be discounted from the list of potential SEO scientists. (Ironically, his Web site is even uglier than my own — so I must admit to some bias here, as I have long been an advocate of “ugly works”).

Branko Rihtman, SEO blogger – Many of you are by now familiar with Branko Rihtman, “SEO Scientist”. Branko’s academic specialty is Biology (his Web bio currently indicates he is a Master of Science student in Molecular Ecology) but he is employed as an SEO technician. While I’m not ready to hail Branko as one of the Great Minds of the Internet, he displays a determination to approach any concept methodically and he seems to have a healthy dose of skepticism. This is one to watch.

William Slawski, search patents – A few years ago SEO blogs and forums lit up every now and then with Google patent discussions. Bill Slawski took it upon himself to wade through a LOT of search engine patents and offer analysis on the possible implications of those patents.

I think Bill Slawski should be recognized as a non-academic SEO scientist because he does a pretty good job of leaving the hyperbole out of his articles. He doesn’t have to be right with all of his analyses (we would have NO professional scientists if that were a requirement). He just has to be consistent in providing the quality of work he publishes. I think he has achieved that consistency with a high degree of quality and authority.

Mike Thelwall, Web metrics – I am still undecided about Professor Mike Thelwall but that is more because I don’t know how deeply involved he has become with the subject. He nonetheless offers a rather methodical perspective (which I would expect from someone in his position — he is the Head of Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group at the University of Wolverhamptom). I would love to spend a day picking HIS brain.

Why your favorite blogger did not make the Potential SEO Scientist list

You could shout a dozen names at me — SEO conference speakers, big powerful bloggers, people with Fortune 500 clients. They are NOT search engine optimization scientists. Nor have I seen any of them claim to be (although there are a fair few not-so-well-known people claiming to be SEO scientists on their sites).

You can certainly draw up your own list of people whom you feel should be considered SEO scientists, but if you start putting your “A List” bloggers on there you’re doing it wrong. People can be great marketers, wonderful communicators, extremely intelligent and highly effective communicators. They can be funny, good looking, personable, and great party animals. But the top names in the SEO community are NOT scientists. They don’t bring a scientific point of view to the study of search engine optimization, they are really not trained for it, and it doesn’t do anyone any good to pretend they really are a scientist.

Conclusion

There IS a science to search engine optimization that has not been well defined or articulated. But most of us are not engaged in scientific research. Nor are we schooled in the scientific study of Web search optimization. The vast majority of Information Retrieval researchers, students, and teachers are not SEO scientists, either. Nor are the engineers and academics who design search engines. It’s sometimes very painful to read academic papers dealing with Web marketing and Web spam because those people can be so clueless they just don’t understand what they are dealing with.

The World Wide Web defines its own rules. People study aspects of it but there isn’t yet a real Webology, much less a Web Searchology discipline. We’re still trying to figure out what the natural phenomena are and we’re only beginning to study a small subset of the phenomena we have identified. There is still so much more to learn before we have a real SEO science.

Web References

Feel free to check out the following Web sites (but the fact that I am linking to them doesn’t mean I am endorsing them — links are not endorsements and you should not assume they are endorsements):

{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }

Philbradley 01.13.09 at 3:58 pm

Thank you for your very kind words; they are much appreciated.

Michael Martinez 01.13.09 at 4:42 pm

You’re very welcome!

seo_scientist 01.13.09 at 11:47 pm

Thank you very much for the mention Michael. Coming from you, it is even a greater compliment.

PS. The name is Branko Rihtman.

Ben McKay 01.14.09 at 4:21 am

Hi Michael,

I was lucky enough to receive an interview on my site with Marie-Claire Jenkins, and like with Mike Thelwall, I believe they both add scientific principles, research and analysis to the field. This might not wholly be relevant to the day-to-day management of SEO campaigns but for longevity in industry’s professionalism and insight in industry progress, I think it’s really is of the utmost importance.

Regarding this point:

“The SEO community still defends search engine optimization as being more art than science. That kind of apologetic attitude doesn’t do much for building credibility in the part that is supposed to be science. But the stumbling block for all of us is that there are really no jobs for search engine optimization scientists.”

…I do agree in many respects that there are not the jobs that you might hope for ‘SEO scientists’ (in the strictest of senses as it’s been used), but I guess the industry has good reason for this. Namely, in my mind at least, that with commercial pressures there isn’t the freedom/time/resources to continually research and test that we might like. I do however think that building science into our more commercial roles is vital for industry and personal credibility, but is unrealistic to expect in the same kind of capacity as Marie-Claire / Mike. I do love my SEO science though and would encourage all to immerse themselves in it as much as possible.

I guess in an industry that is still in it’s infancy, we need to define the very nature of what services we provide. I only hope we draw more from SEO science than we do SEO art. SEO art has a place but not to the level of science I believe.

Thanks for introducing me to a couple of other SEO Scientists that I was unaware of too, Michael.

Ben McKay 01.14.09 at 4:34 am

One thing I guess I didn’t make clear in my last comment was that the best thing about SEO as a science is that you’re not just doing stuff, you’re making sure that your time is being spent wisely. And that might in actual fact free up some time to do more research too! :)

dr_pete 01.14.09 at 6:36 am

Thanks for the mention, Michael. I know we’ve occasionally argued on forums in the past (more over style than substance), but mostly because I enjoy an occasional argument :) I’ve always appreciated your calls for more rigor – it’s not always easy, and best practices are the best we can do at times, but we should all be trying to take a scientific approach to improving site performance whenever possible.

Michael Martinez 01.14.09 at 7:54 am

Branko, sorry about the mis-spelling. Not sure how I didn’t catch that on the edit but I’ve corrected it now.

Ben, thanks for mentioning your interview with Marie-Claire Jenkins. It’s quite substantial and includes illustrations, folks. Check it out.

dr_pete — no sweat. :)

cgm 01.15.09 at 4:04 am

“a person who studies natural phenomena in a systematic manner” – are search results a natural phenomena?

Also can SEO be creative and original when all we are trying to do is get the best results out of someone elses algorithm? I reckon that sure, a lot of what a scientist does is important to SEO – keeping up to date with literature and applying experimental procedure – but in my mind that last step that makes a scientist – contributing original, creative research to the world – is missing as we are following the search engines.

Maybe I’m looking at it from the wrong perspective, IR rather than marketing.

Michael Martinez 01.15.09 at 9:26 am

Is a dam a thing of nature because a beaver constructed it but not a thing of nature because man created it? What about a “natural” dam that is created when trees are hewn down by some disaster, find their ways into flood waters, and pile up somewhere downstream, forcing water to back up?

Search results are natural phenomena within their environment. Or, to paraphrase Sante Achille, the difference between science and engineering is an order of magnitude.

That is, you can show that search results are natural phenomena within the right context. The same is true for economic systems, rates of oxygen burn within factories, and the industrial volumes of methane gas produced by herds of cattle.

However, I don’t believe that people are simply following the search engines. We are an active part of the natural searchable Web ecosystem, and there is a science that can and should be built around the discovery, exploration, and understanding of that ecosystem.

The only obstacle in our path is the framework in which we choose to look at it.

Dave 01.15.09 at 12:23 pm

Hi Michael, Dave here. It is certainly a pleasure spending time talking shop with Bill and CJ as they are certainly far more in tune with IR than most SEO folks that I run into (although I suspect CJ of being a double agent for the AIR peeps – j/k) – it is nice to see them on the list and getting some credit. You really could put yourself on there as well if it were up to me.

I know some of the others (the ever entertaining Edel Garcia for example) and thanks to you have a few more great resources for my addiction.

Thanks for the new leads and keep up the great work!!

mugile 01.15.09 at 4:08 pm

Hi Michael,

Let’s say that tomorrow you will have access to all of the search engines algorithm.
Let’s say that you will have access to the search engine control panel or tweakUI like interface.
Will you still need the science methodology? To discover what?

My point is that the science in SEO if it exists is solely algorithm chasing. A mind battle between two human communities (optimizers and SE developers). The SERP is a result of the SE algorithm and if you would know the algorithm and all of its parameters (and receive updates on any future changes in this algorithm), you will stop doing your studies.

Am I right or wrong with this?

Guy

Michael Martinez 01.15.09 at 11:38 pm

Guy, search engine optimization is not just about unraveling how any one search engine ranks content. It’s also about understanding how people use search engines. So even if we knew everything about how the search engines work we would still need to study how people use them.

It’s not about algorithm chasing, it’s about understanding the system that is much larger than the indexing, crawling, and ranking algorithms. They are just a very small part of the picture.

hugoguzman 01.16.09 at 5:31 am

Very solid post. Although I’m far from a scientist, I agree that using the scientific method is the best approach both for me as an SEO professional, and for the industry as a whole.

P.S. In terms of the “part art, part science” argument, some might say that the ability use creativity to secure inbound links is likened to an art. That said, the understanding of how those links affect search results, etc…is definitely in the realm of science.

mugile 01.16.09 at 1:52 pm

Thank you Michael.

As always, you are right.
Now I understand where the real science is. The real science in SEO should be in the field of investigating the way people use the search engines.
Which one from the list above is a scientist in this field?

Guy

Michael Martinez 01.16.09 at 2:33 pm

Guy, I’m not sure anyone really qualifies as an SEO scientist. I just feel the people I named above all have something to contribute to our collective understanding of the processes.