Some SEO companies base the claim of their service’s superiority on the fact that they have high rankings in the search engines. This argument is crippled by more than one logical fallacy. So let’s examine each.
Argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people): This fallacy arises from the notion that simply because most people believe something to be true, that in fact it is. This is an easy mistake to fall prey to because human nature is such that we will usually follow the most popular belief rather than question its validity. The claim that just because the website of an SEO company ranks well then their services must be good or at least better than the companies whose sites don’t rank as highly. With this logic Wikipedia and SEO Chat can provide the best search engine optimization services (Google ‘search engine optimization’ to see the results).
Even though just one falacy is enough to debunk this claim of quality based on rankings, let’s continue with this analysis. The next fallacy that applies is Affirming the Consequent.
Affirming the Consequent: This fallacy arises from the reasoning that:
1. If P, then Q (if an SEO company website ranks well, then it must provide superior service)
2. Q (an SEO company provides superior service)
3. Therefore P (therefore it must rank highly in the search engines)
This is a fallacy because it was never asserted that P was the only cause of Q, so any number of other factors could have caused Q. With this in mind, just because an SEO company doesn’t have high rankings, it doesn’t mean that they offer (and provide) an inferior service. Odd, the claim that high rankings is equivalent to high quality is taking a serious beating from logic. Let’s continue.
Correlation Does Not Imply Causation: Correlation between two variables does not necessarily imply causation. So in this particular case, just because sometimes high quality service providers rank highly in the search engines, does not necessarily mean that all service providers who rank highly in the search engines provide a high quality service.
Finally! We have logically debunked the claim “We are the best–just check our rankings in Google!”
If you are looking for SEO services, don’t be tricked by fallacious claims. There are many companies and individuals who provide high quality marketing services without having rankings that rival the first page results of other firms.
To learn more about the above fallacies use the links below:
- Argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people)
- Affirming the Consequent
- Correlation does not imply causation
