As search marketers, we constantly have to deal with ambiguity — whether trying to reverse engineer a Google algorithm or simply prioritize and forecast the impact of the SEO recommendations we’re making. In this article, we’re going to explore what drives SEO ambiguity. Spoiler alert: some major survival skills are required.

When dealing with SEO ambiguity, it’s important first to note that the human brain is predisposed to seeking out meaningful and meaningless patterns. This concept, defined as “patternicity” by Skeptic Magazine founder, Michael Shermer, potentially creates two types of cognitive errors: we believe a pattern is real when it is not (Type 1), or we don’t believe a pattern is real when it is (Type 2). Read More.