It’s the Holy Grail of search marketing to be the #1 listing for your Primary Keyword or Phrase. But it’s not that simple. There are a number of ranking issues with the major search engines that make the elusive #1 position even more elusive than you might imagine. Forget SEO for a moment and think about the fact that the internet itself as a whole is a VERY dynamic environment.

Search engine rankings are always in a state of flux. This happens for a number of reasons. First, web pages are being added and subtracted from the internet at rates closing in on 100’s of thousands a day. This alone is enough to ensure search ranking change on a regular basis. Add to this the fact that the search algorithms are also changing on a constant basis and rely on many factors which themselves change on a regular basis. An example of this would be in-bound links to specific pages. Historically fixed positions in search engine ranking are almost unheard of due to the fluid nature of the internet itself.

Additionally, the major search engines are really just HUGE databases full of information about web pages and this information is spread out among a number of different data centers. In a perfect world, these databases would be perfectly in sync. The huge amount of data contained in these databases makes this a near impossible task. So what we end up with is different data centers sometimes showing different results. If a person in California finds his site at #1, that does not mean the customer in Ohio searching with the same keyword finds the same site at #1.

Now take into consideration Personal Search. The proliferation of this variation on search results is starting to take its toll. Search engines are customizing search results based on an individuals personal search habits. This means what might be a #1 ranking for you may only be a #5 or #6 for me. Each person will have their own results, making that #1 listing even more elusive.

Congratulations to you if you find your site at #1 for your keywords. But don’t despair if they fluctuate up and down over time or if someone across the country or across the room sees results that differ from yours. If you are on the first page, expect to bounce around a bit. Just remind yourself if the results were fixed, you wouldn’t have had your chance to be #1 in the first place.

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