[billpatrianakos]

One of us doesn't get it. Maybe I'm not understanding but I don't see how what you describe would be any different than how it is today. If search is all about the most relevant results then the engines would still operate much the same as they do now so money would still create an unfair advantage and reward scammers who would still do everything you described in addition to using the paid features.

Furthermore I don't think there is a way to get data that is any less vague than it is now. Each site is so unique that this solution can't scale and you'd have to settle for analyzing the data yourself. Also, Analytics does have to do with what you described when it comes to seeing what's working as far as SEO goes and yes, AdWords would be more appropriate as an example when talking about competitor and keyword research. For some reason I thought those tools were in GA.

Generally though this really seems like a return to the bad old days except instead of keyword stuffing your meta tags you pay to play. Your whole plan would lead to the end of truly organic results. Yeah, the system a Ready gets gamed now but at least everyone has am equal shot of gaming it. All you need is the knowledge. The current paid techniques of gaming the system would simply shift from third parties to the search engines themselves. I also feel like what you describe is closer to a paid directory with search functionality than a search engine. I mean, even if it worked like search does today plus those paid features it wouldn't be long before the true search functionality became irrelevant and we'd be left with a directory where whoever paid the most came out on top.

To your credit, I agree that it would be nice to get some more data, better data, and data presented in a more human-friendly/layperson-friendly way but you lose me as soon as you get into a lot of these paid features that help you rank higher.

[benologist]

Today everything SEO is a combination of educated guesses and common consensus. Even with incomplete or flat out wrong information people still successfully manipulate rankings to push good or bad content higher.

There is nobody out there who knows exactly what is going on or whether your redesign is going to help or harm or whether your content is the best it can be. But they will charge you lots of money to apply what they've observed to work before or to automate processes and monitoring and performance.

All of this happens today without any specific clarity into how Google works, I don't think it would worsen the situation if the guesswork was taken out of the equation - sites with no SEO still won't matter, sites with SEO still will, and bad people/sites will still be an on-going game of whack-a-mole.