Google’s Mueller On SEO Gurus Who Are “Clueless Imposters” via @sejournal, @martinibuster

A search marketing professional from India wrote a blog post about how she feels about seeing the word guru used within the SEO community in a way that’s different from its meaning in India. Several people, including Google’s John Mueller, agreed with her and shared how they felt when people self-identify as SEO gurus.

The Word Guru Is Misused

Preeti Gupta wrote a blog post titled, I don’t like how the word ‘Guru’ is misused in the SEO industry, in which she shared what the word guru actually means and how it’s misused in the SEO industry in a way that trivializes a word that in India holds special meaning.

She wrote that in India the word guru has a deep meaning and that they hold great respect for actual gurus.

Her blog post shared a Sanskrit mantra about it:

“The Guru is like Brahma (the creator). They create the desire for knowledge.
The Guru is like Vishnu (The preserver). They help the student keep and use the knowledge.
The Guru is like Maheshwara (Shiva, the Destroyer). They destroy ignorance and bad habits.
The Guru is the supreme reality itself, standing right before your eyes.
I bow and offer my respects to that great teacher.”

She then contrasted that profound meaning of the word guru with the trivialization of it within the context of self-described SEO gurus, who she regards as shady types who engage in unethical SEO practices. She said that it’s not her intention to tell people what words to use, but she did express the hope that people would use the word in the right context.

The phrase SEO guru is used in both contexts, as a derogatory phrase to paint someone as a false leader with naïve followers and also as someone who is highly regarded. However, I think an argument can be made that using that phrase for oneself is immodest, self-aggrandizing, and simply isn’t a good look.

AlexHarford-TechSEO responded to her post on Bluesky:

“It puts me off when I see an SEO self-describe themselves as a “Guru.” I’ve never come across anyone who does so who is a good and ethical SEO.

A lot of words are losing meaning in today’s world, though there can’t be many that were as special to you as Guru.”

Words are always in a state of change, and the way people speak not only changes from region to region but also from decade to decade. The meaning of words does change, especially when they jump continents and languages.

Self-Declared SEO Gurus

It was at this point that John Mueller responded to share what he thinks about self-described SEO gurus:

“To me, when someone self-declares themselves as an SEO guru, it’s an extremely obvious sign that they’re a clueless imposter. SEO is not belief-based, nobody knows everything, and it changes over time. You have to acknowledge that you were wrong at times, learn, and practice more.”

Mueller is right that nobody knows everything and that SEO changes over time, and for a long time many SEOs didn’t keep up with how Google ranks websites. The industry has largely shed that naivete, and yet nobody really agrees on what to do to rank better in search engines and AI search.

SEO Is A Belief System

Although I know there are some SEOs who firmly believe that SEO is a set of universally agreed upon practices and that that is all there is, unaware that the history of SEO is one of constant change. How SEO is practiced today is quite different from how it was practiced eight years ago. There is no set of practices to be agreed on except Google’s best practices, which are less about do this and you will rank better and more about do this and you may have a chance to rank better.

So yes, to a certain extent, SEO is a belief system and will continue to be a belief system so long as Google’s search ranking algorithms remain a black box algorithm that people can see what goes in and what comes out but not what happens in the middle. That part remains a mystery. So when you don’t know for sure that what you do will guarantee better rankings, the only thing left is to believe, hope, and even have faith that the rankings will happen. Faith, after all, is belief in something that does not provide definitive proof. You don’t need faith to believe in a fact, right?

And that last part, the mystery of what happens in the black box, is why nobody can really call themselves a guru in the sense of being all-knowing. Nobody outside of Google knows everything that’s going on within that part in the middle where the rankings “magic” happens.

Given all that, who can truly call themselves a guru in SEO?

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