Is Google Certified shops a ranking factor?

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

This is to spark a debate, rather than an answer which has a specific answer.

While Google may claim that being on the certified programme doesn't increase your ranking, but part of their algorithm looks into whether a website is trustworthy.

To get accepted onto the certified shops you have to prove your a trust worthy reliable business that constantly gets audited. So surely this must be directly / indirectly be a ranking factor?

Just thought I would throw it out there for a debate.

[ClaytonJ]

I believe (surprisingly) google on this one. The factors they have for trustworthiness already in place, backlinks, social media mentions etc. etc. already have a sites "trustworthiness covered".  I think the shops certification at present might be a bridge to far.. as I am not sure it adds great value. It is absolutely tiny in the grand scheme.

However I always believe good SEO is adopting obvious paths for the google bot. ie google will always ensure the bot - can crawl google inventions...  google+, google maps etc. and there SEO value can be exponential ie like google + (for something that is actually close to useless).

So my view not a ranking factor, that said worth doing, not a priority - because it is a nice logo you get on your site and maybe sometime down the track google will uplift it to be a factor like they did with HTTPS. Be one step ahead of the game..

[EGOL]

This isn't an answer.  Its a rant.  So if you don't like rants, don't read it.

Google is always telling webmasters to "do this" and "do that".   Sometimes they dictate to webmasters because they want to "kick them up a notch" but sometimes they dictate to webmasters because Google is incompetent at certain things and they want webmasters to make-up for their inadequacies. 

Sometimes they tell webmasters to jump through this hoop or jump through that hoop and snatch the hoop away after you have left the ground.  Sometimes the hoop is invisible.

Google told webmasters not long ago about an "authorship" program that would associate content with specific authors and show your photo in the SERPs.   I never wanted my name on my article and am too old to display my photo in the SERPs but I did this stuff regardless.  You had to connect your articles to your Google Plus page to make all of this work.  After millions of authors did this Google decided that our photos were stinkin' up the SERPs, then they changed their minds and abandoned the idea completely.  I think it was just a ploy to get million of great authors to join Google Plus.

Several years ago Google also told authors that they should "write for Knol" and they would be rewarded with adsense.  I was going to put 1/2 of my time into writing "knols".  Good thing I didn't because Google abandoned that too.

Matt Cutts told me in the comments of a Moz blog post that I could sculpt pagerank with nofollow.  Lots of people started doing that and Google changed their mind about that and changed how it influenced pagerank flow and never told anybody about it until months later.

I could go on and on about Google dumping Reader, ignoring Feedburner and ton's of other stuff...  the bottom line is that if Google says you should do something, it doesn't mean that they actually use it or that it is going to help your rankings or even that it is safe.

I also believe that some things that Google promotes are absolutely dangerous to the health of your websites in the SERPs.  I would bet one month's pay with confidence that Google Consumer Surveys is dangerous for the health of your SERPs, but that is just an opinion and a reason why I am not making buckets of money running it on my websites.

And, in my opinion, Google Consumer Surveys is an excellent example that people on Silo A at Google don't even know that there are people working on something in Silo B that is totally contrary to their goals.    Mobile-friendly is a coding requirement and has nothing to do with your website being friendly to use on mobile.  It could really stink but they will tell everybody on the web that its friendly.

Bottom line, you should be careful about jumpin' through any hoop that Google says to jump.  They have some great stuff at Google but they don't talk to each other and things tend to disappear.