How much is Google ranking worth?

I was thinking, it must be possible nowadays to sell your photography business without selling a single piece of gear or anything - just the name, and the website. In that case, the sale value could be determined largely by Google ranking, I reckon. If your business ranks consistently on page one of a relevant search, that's gotta be worth something, right?

If so, how do you put a value on it?

What other factors contribute to sale value of a small business where nothing physical is being sold - just the business itself?

It's profitability (among many other factors like debts, liabilities, etc) that would determine your business' market value. Google rank would only be a small part of it.

I think it'd be a fairly huge selling point for a business. I'm near #1 in google, i'm sure that's one of the reasons I photograph 25-30 weddings per year, which is well above the average for the area.

There are some rule of thumb rough guides to valuing a business. One that I have used is five times annual profits plus fixed assets minus liabilities. The other is two or three times annual turnover.

These calculations take into account the web site, physical location, google rank etc. as the turnover/profitability would be less without them or if they were poor.

When you are valuing a business to purchase the seller will invariably try to itemise each item and put a value to it. As a buyer you have to remember you are buying a business as a whole and it is the sum of the parts which give the business value. This value is properly reflected in the turnover. Having a number one google ranking is only valuable if it turns into real money that shows in the books.

tim wrote in post #6601214
I'm near #1 in google, i'm sure that's one of the reasons I photograph 25-30 weddings per year, which is well above the average for the area.

Care to write a tutorial on SEO, or point us to links / info that helped you? Heck, if you write a book I'll buy it!

take a look at the second thread down in this section, some very good info there on SEO

Webby

You physically can not view a google ranking as a assest unless it makes you money nor a liability unless it looses you money. A Google ranking can actually never be a liability unless you pull a stupid move and pay to have someone get your website higher on the lists. A google rank below 2 million is useless (I am taking into account all Google cached websites). I have had websites in the thousands area on Google (#1,239) at one point in time, now it has fallen to #1,343,877. The only money I ever made bought me a 70-200 mm F/2.8 lens and that is it. It barely paid for the $398 server bill it was running up every month. So in my eyes now a days it is hard to attribute sales growth to Google rankings, all Google ranking does is provide a platform to view your website. But not all visitors that come to your website order something or decide to use your services, if they are using Google to find it, they will more than likely find a cheaper deal somewhere else and use that and or them.

It's very important.

Jon.

I've personally see Tim's site grow in google positioning, when keywording Wellington wedding photographer. Now he's only 2nd out of 3 - Wellington's just a small insignificant town of NZ

Anyone else running Page Rank?
I didn't do too much work, but did have a 3/10 rank when shooting more professionally back in 2006. But has since gone back to 2/10 and stayed there. My blog has gone from 0/10 or no rating, to 2/10.

CannedHeat wrote in post #6602898
Care to write a tutorial on SEO, or point us to links / info that helped you? Heck, if you write a book I'll buy it!

Just the basics - html website, good words on the page, and lots of linkbacks using the text my customers use to find a wedding photographer.

Wazza wrote in post #6603726
I've personally see Tim's site grow in google positioning, when keywording Wellington wedding photographer. Now he's only 2nd out of 3 - Wellington's just a small insignificant town of NZ

Quiet in the cheap seats, or you'll be exiled to the convict colony

Wait are we talking about rankings as in search engine standings, or are we talking about PageRank?

jpwone wrote in post #6602722
There are some rule of thumb rough guides to valuing a business. One that I have used is five times annual profits plus fixed assets minus liabilities. The other is two or three times annual turnover.

Good rules, thanks. My question is, can Google rank be considered an asset of sorts? After all, good rank is the web equivalent of owning a premises on a busy road.

jpwone wrote in post #6602722
Having a number one google ranking is only valuable if it turns into real money that shows in the books.

You say that as if it's difficult. Surely it's quite easy to demonstrate that google ranking directly correlates to sales?

EnronRocks wrote in post #6603074
You physically can not view a google ranking as a assest unless it makes you money.

If you have a website, and people come to your website via Google, and buy your goods or services, then your google ranking is making you money - I fail to see the ambiguity.

EnronRocks wrote in post #6603074
A google rank below 2 million is useless (I am taking into account all Google cached websites).

No, I disagree. All you need is to rank well for your relevant search terms, including (in my case, and I'm sure many others') the name of your city/suburb. Most of us aren't trying to sell our photography services to an international market, just to customers in our area.

EnronRocks wrote in post #6603074
So in my eyes now a days it is hard to attribute sales growth to Google rankings, all Google ranking does is provide a platform to view your website. But not all visitors that come to your website order something or decide to use your services, if they are using Google to find it, they will more than likely find a cheaper deal somewhere else and use that and or them.

So what? The number of searchers who turn into customers is irrelevant - that percentage will always be tiny. It's the percentage of your annual turnover that comes from Google which is relevant.

Damo77 wrote in post #6604295
If you have a website, and people come to your website via Google, and buy your goods or services, then your google ranking is making you money - I fail to see the ambiguity.

That's what I said bunny bread.

Damo77 wrote in post #6604295
No, I disagree. All you need is to rank well for your relevant search terms, including (in my case, and I'm sure many others') the name of your city/suburb. Most of us aren't trying to sell our photography services to an international market, just to customers in our area.

There is no ranking system that calculates just your ranking in a given market. For example, there is no core data from Google in a PDF document that says I am listed #1 in every search done by people whole live in Atlanta searching for an Atlanta Sports Photographer. If so how much are you paying because I need to get my hands on that...

Damo77 wrote in post #6604295
So what? The number of searchers who turn into customers is irrelevant - that percentage will always be tiny. It's the percentage of your annual turnover that comes from Google which is relevant.

Well, in the case of the internet you are wrong. A visit to your site costs you money, no matter how you look at it. You are paying for webhosting, you are paying for a domain, and you are in some peoples case paying to have their website listed higher on Google with all these so called "Google scripts" that "attract" Google's web crawlers.

I can have a website that has around 60,000 users and receivs around 4 million hits a week. But unless someone is actually buying something (Or clicking on ads) then the site is nothing but a liability. A site like a forum I ran a while back uses far too much resources for shared hosting, which means I was pulling hundreds out of my pocket each month to rent a dedicated server.

So in other words, if you website is not making you a dime at all in a years time frame, it is in fact a liability no matter how good your google ranking is.

Damo77 wrote in post #6604244
Good rules, thanks. My question is, can Google rank be considered an asset of sorts? After all, good rank is the web equivalent of owning a premises on a busy road.


You say that as if it's difficult. Surely it's quite easy to demonstrate that google ranking directly correlates to sales?

My view is that the google rank is not a separate entity that can be sold without the underlying business. The business generated by being higher up the rankings will be reflected in the turnover of the business as a whole and if you are paying/valuing the business based on turnover then there is no need to add anything for the google ranking as it is already accounted for.

Separating the value of the ranking from the business as a whole would be difficult as the value of the ranking is hard to quantify as a specific percentage of turnover. How many clicks turn into sales? How many customers found you through google? How many of those that found you through google would have found you anyway? Could you transfer the ranking to another business?

There is of course the traditional catch-all used in business of 'goodwill' and on the face of it a google ranking would seem to fall within that category. Personally I expect the 'goodwill' to be in the price reflected in the turnover and it would take a fair bit of convincing to get me to pay extra for something which I believe is already accounted for