I got a marketing email from Hubspot today, with a headline about detecting “bad seo”. It then made an argument based on the “fact” that 20% of the queries on Google’s search engine have never been searched before. That was enough for me to recognize Hubspot as a “bad seo” vendor.

The 20% number is pure Google propaganda. “Good” SEOs aren’t so easily led astray.

I assume that at the time Google announced that “20%” statistic, it was good for Google for frame the issue that way. Tomorrow, when Google wants to give an alternative impression (for whatever reason), it will be easy to re-position that data. SEO people need to be smarter than that. Don’t believe everything Google says. Better yet, “critical thinking” is essential for SEO.

Maybe today I search “shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Florida” looking for a shop to resole my awesome c. 1981 biker boots. That’s a new query and is counted.

Next I search “shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Florida” and, technically, that query has never been searched before. Merely a comma different, yet “not the same”. If I’m looking for a large number for my “there are a lot of new queries every day”propaganda, I increment the count.

Maybe someone searches “shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Florida”.. another “brand new, never before searched phrase”. And then how about “shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Florida”, with the extra period? The count continues to rise.

We can see how very quickly we get way up there in numbers….especially when we are reporting percentages:

“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Florida”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Florida”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Fl”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Fl.”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Fl.”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Fl”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Florida”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale, Florida”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Fl”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale, Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale, Fl”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Florida”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale, Florida”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Fl”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale, Fl”

Suddenly 20% is not a very surprising figure. There are many, many more variations but I stopped documenting permutations above because quite frankly, the way Google has been over-reacting to market dynamics lately, I’m afraid my site will be banned for spamming the local shoe repair SERPs for Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Is it really remarkable that 20% of searches on Google have never been searched before? I honestly don’t know, because Google only released that junk statement and no good supporting data about how it was obtained. Junk science, or junk SEO, in this case. Meaningless as best, and distracting at worst.

If you start your SEO newsletter with some assertions based on such “facts”, I think you lose credibility as an SEO.

Critical thinking, folks. Think of it as a necessary tool for survival in web marketing and SEO.