Industry guru Dave Taylor answers free tech support questions about a wide variety of business and technical topics, including blogging, Google AdSense, MySpace, Sony PSP, Apple iPod, Mp3 players, management, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Microsoft Windows.

SupportSpace: Immediate Live Tech Support. Free Assessment + $10 coupon!!

Search Engine Optimization: Mac versus Windows?

I have heard that Mac has issues with Google and SEO-related tactics. Is there any truth to this or is it all bunk? I am looking in to buy a Mac and move away from the PC world but I am getting conficting reports. Please, Dave, give me the truth about PC vs Mac.

Dave's Answer:

I'm intrigued by this question, because this isn't the first time I have heard from people deep in the search engine optimization ("SEO") camp that Windows has a secret advantage over Mac with Google and search engine results placement (known in the SEO world as "SERP", actually).

But why? How could anyone think that the system that you use to access the Web, or even the operating system of the computer that you used to create or maintain (or tweak) your site could possibly be detected by a search engine and then affect your placement?

Hmmm.... let's think about this in rather a brainstorming way...

One possibility could be that Web site creation software leaves a distinct signature, like Microsoft Front Page's "Creator" meta tag. Maybe. But even if there is a distinct signature of some sort for pages produced by a Mac or PC, I find it basically impossible to believe that a search engine programmer would care about what computer you've used.

Perhaps the issue is the quality of code produced? Well, Macs seem to have had the edge with top-notch Web site development software for rather a while, so unless we're talking "advantage Mac", as they might say in a tennis match, I can't see where SEO folk would be worrying about this. Frankly, high-design sites are often anathema to search engine placement anyway.

Another possibility: an algorithmic bias towards Windows and against Macs in terms of the statistical likelihood that the content is high quality, unique and of value to the overall online community? I can just barely imagine a bias, though it'd be a bit of a daft one, but the bias would surely be in the other direction anyway, with the software assuming that Mac Web sites are just a wee bit higher quality, overall, than Windows sites?

The real possibility here, the likely basis of this question in my opinion, is that most of the SEO software -- position monitoring software, link building software, etc. -- is only written for Windows. This does indeed seem to be true. So perhaps the issue here is that SEO people have a bias towards Windows because of the availability of SEO software, but it gets diluted in the telling to be that search engines themselves prefer Windows over Mac.

To answer your question directly, however, yeah, in my opinion any talk of search engines preferring Windows over Mac content is bunk.

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Simpy.

Categorized: Search Engine Optimization (Article 4057)
Tagged:
Previous: What's a micromanager?
Next: Purchasing domain name: seller keeps raising price?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

Perhaps the rumor originated from a user of the Google Toolbar http://toolbar.google.com

There are other Google toolbars for Mac, but Google Toolbar has the only quick and legit way to check the Google PageRank of all of your pages and your competitors' pages. Currently Google Toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer for Windows.

If tweaking PageRank is important to you, you might want to boot up a Windows machine every few weeks to check your progress. Otherwise, using a Mac can only help your development work.

PageRank is described here http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html ... er, I mean here .... http://www.google.com/technology/

Posted by: David Corking at July 5, 2005 10:20 PM

Dave,

I agree with you! Nothing about the web page software available for a MAC makes any difference in the HTML produced that is used to host a web page. I've taken pages I produced on an IBM compatible computer and reworked them on a MAC and vice a versa with no changes to the page ranking in Google or any other search engine. I have even had SEO companies work to optimize many pages for me that I�ve developed on a MAC without ever once having them say that anything was wrong with any part of the pages in question. If there were any REAL difference in the pages produced they would be the first to point them out. In fact it�s never once come up what OS I used on the machine that produced the code for any site that I�ve ever submitted. I�ve had them not want code written using some programs (usually frontpage) but that is not something that has to do with the OS. That being said I�ve yet to find a SEO company that uses anything but IBM compatible computers to work on search engine optimization.

The problem comes in and what fuels this rumor is in finding software that works on a MAC to do SEO or anything else for that matter. It isn't Windows over MAC from a HTML production stand point but from a software available standpoint that limits the MAC OS. I always use the MAC for the graphics design part of my web page designing and the IBM compatible to maintain the general day to day operation. Believe me the MAC runs circles around the IBM compatible when it comes to graphics. But when it comes to other uses the software to do the job becomes either non-existent or limited to the point that the IBM compatible takes charge.

Frank Woodman Jr

PS It's also interesting to note that since most hosting providers use Apache as the hosting software of choice running under Linux they certainly don't have a bias toward Microsoft and Windows over the MAC. It is the area of web site hosting that is the area of strongest support that Linux and the anti Microsoft arena have. If it weren�t for the big lead (head start) that Linux got in the arena of web hosting in the early days of the dot com craze Linux might not have survived. That is much like the advantage that the MAC has always had when working with graphics. If the MAC hadn�t had this arena basically to it�s self for professional artistic work the MAC could well have failed to survive.

Posted by: Frank Woodman Jr at July 6, 2005 6:41 AM

Hmmmm... I'd like to point out that Page Rank on google seems to have little to do with the actual position the result is found on.

I have some niche and some very popular keywords for sites that come up consistently in the top 8.
The page ranks however are 4 and lower.
This has remained consistent since they rose in May of this year.

I alos notice on many searches that the page rank of sites at the top are not always higher then page ranks lower down in position.

Weird...

Posted by: Jes at July 14, 2005 12:24 PM

What is 20+19 - supposed to mean??

Yours is the most wonderful advice column on the net. Thank you for sharing all your stuff.

O.K., now that I've praised you, here comes the bad stuff - well, not too bad, just a polite request. When you mention an acronym or any word that is computer jargon, please, in brackets next to that word or collection of cyphers, put a very short explanation. I've been dying to know what RSS stands for as an example and though you give tons of explanation about it, you DON'T tell us what the letters represent or what is IS!

Do not presume that everyone is computer savvy. I have had a computer for 9 years but it has not been the center of my life and I've not spent all my waking hours studying it. Most "stuff" I've learned by accident or, like the proverbial gorilla sitting at a keyboard for a million years, I finally get to write Shakespeare!

Please consider those of us who WANT to learn more but get stymied by unfamiliar and unexplained words that act as a barricade against acquiring more knowledge. Again, I thank you for a marvellous website bursting with the juice of computer knowhow.

Posted by: fifi la foo at August 27, 2005 5:24 PM

Hi: I am a complete Mac person and do all my sites on the Mac. I have a few sites that are ranked top 3 pages for their respective keywords and so I can safely conclude that there are no Mac disadvantages where SEO is concerned.

Regarding Google Toolbar, there has been a toolbar for Firefox for sometime. I also believe the IE toolbar is also available.

Posted by: Cheong at January 4, 2006 10:47 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!