Last updated: November 7, 2026
SEO, short for search engine optimization, is the practice of improving your website so it shows up higher in the unpaid results on Google and other search engines, and for most businesses it takes roughly three to six months of steady work before the results become clear. In the typical case, a small Canadian business picks the terms its customers actually search, tidies up the technical side of its site, publishes helpful, relevant pages around those terms, and earns a few quality links and reviews, then watches its rankings climb over the following months. How quickly that happens depends on how competitive your market is, how old and trusted your site already is, and how much you put into content and links.
SEO at a glance
- What it stands for: SEO means search engine optimization, the work of earning unpaid, organic search visibility rather than buying it.
- The main types: on-page, technical, and off-page SEO, with local SEO as a fourth focus for businesses that serve a city or region.
- Organic vs paid: SEO earns free clicks that build over time, while paid ads buy instant placement that stops the moment you stop paying.
- Typical timeline: most sites see meaningful movement in three to six months, with larger gains over six to twelve months of consistent work.
- Planning budget: Canadian small businesses commonly budget anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month, depending on scope (a planning estimate, not a quote).
- How it’s measured: by keyword rankings, organic traffic, and the leads or sales that traffic actually produces.
Key SEO terms, defined
- Organic results: the unpaid listings a search engine ranks on merit, shown around and below the ads.
- Keyword: the word or phrase someone types into a search engine to find something.
- On-page SEO: optimizing the content and HTML of a page so it clearly matches what people search for.
- Technical SEO: the behind-the-scenes work that helps search engines crawl, render, and index your site.
- Off-page SEO: building authority through backlinks, mentions, and reputation signals from other websites.
- Local SEO: the work that helps a business appear in map results and searches tied to a location.
- Backlink: a link from another website to yours, which search engines read as a vote of confidence.
- SERP: the search engine results page, meaning the list of results you see after you search.
Every website starts from a different place, so there’s no single SEO plan that fits everyone, and the timelines and budgets here are planning ranges rather than promises. Search engines update their systems constantly, and no reputable provider can guarantee a number-one ranking or a set number of leads. Treat what follows as general education to help you make informed decisions, and weigh any specific advice against your own market, goals, and resources.
Key takeaways
- SEO is the practice of earning unpaid search visibility by making your site relevant, trustworthy, and easy for search engines to understand.
- It breaks into on-page, technical, and off-page work, with local SEO as a key focus for businesses that serve a city or region.
- Search engines rank pages by crawling and indexing the web, then weighing relevance, authority, and the experience a page gives the reader.
- SEO is a long game. Most businesses wait three to six months for clear results, which is the trade-off for traffic you don’t pay for per click.
- You measure SEO through rankings, organic traffic, and the leads or sales it drives, not through any single number.
- AI Overviews and AI-assisted search have changed how results look, but helpful content and a sound website still decide who gets shown and cited.
- No reputable provider can guarantee rankings, so treat any promise of a specific position with caution.
What is SEO?
SEO is the practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in the organic, unpaid sections of search engines like Google and Bing, which brings in visitors without paying for each click. The acronym stands for search engine optimization, and the whole idea rests on a simple exchange. Search engines want to send people to the most useful, trustworthy page for whatever they searched, so if you make your site useful and easy to understand, you earn more of that free traffic. It’s one of the core disciplines inside digital marketing, and for many businesses it’s the channel that quietly delivers customers for years after the work is done. If you’d rather hand the ongoing work to a team, our SEO services page explains how that engagement typically runs.
Here’s a plain way to picture it. Imagine a customer in your city opens Google and types what you sell. There are only so many spots on that first page, and roughly two out of three clicks go to the handful of results near the top. SEO is the work of earning one of those spots. You do that by matching your pages to what people search, proving your site is credible, and making sure search engines can read and trust your content. The reward is steady visibility that you aren’t renting by the click. For a wider view of how SEO sits alongside paid ads, email, and social, our guide to building a digital marketing strategy shows where each channel fits.
How does SEO work?
SEO works by lining your site up with the three things a search engine does: it crawls the web to discover pages, indexes what it finds, and then ranks those pages when someone searches. Get all three right and your pages become eligible to appear, and the more relevant and trustworthy they are, the higher they tend to sit. Miss any one of them and even brilliant content can stay invisible, because a page that can’t be crawled or indexed never gets the chance to rank at all.
Crawling comes first. Search engines send out automated programs, often called crawlers or bots, that follow links around the web and fetch pages. Indexing is the next step, where the engine stores and organizes what it found so it can serve those pages later. Ranking is the part most people picture when they think about SEO: when someone searches, the engine sorts through everything it has indexed and orders the results by how well each page answers the query. That ordering is driven by hundreds of signals, but they group into a few themes that are worth understanding.
| Signal group | What search engines weigh | How you influence it |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | How closely a page matches the words and intent behind a search | Target clear topics, answer the real question, use natural language |
| Authority | How trusted your site and page are, often shown through backlinks | Earn quality links, references, and a strong reputation over time |
| Experience | How usable the page is, including speed and mobile friendliness | Fix page speed, make the layout clean, remove friction |
| Content quality | Whether the page is helpful, accurate, and reasonably complete | Write for people first, cover the topic properly, keep it current |
| Technical health | Whether bots can crawl, render, and index the page cleanly | Sound site structure, working links, a clear sitemap |
No one outside Google knows the exact formula, and it shifts with regular updates, so chasing a single magic factor is a losing game. The durable approach is to serve the searcher well on every front at once. Google publishes plenty of guidance on this in its own documentation, and you can read the fundamentals straight from the Google Search Central SEO Starter Guide if you want the source material.
What are the main types of SEO?
SEO is usually split into three main types, on-page, technical, and off-page, with local SEO treated as a fourth focus for businesses that serve a specific area. They aren’t separate projects so much as different angles on the same goal, and a healthy site needs attention across all of them. Neglect one and it tends to cap the returns from the others, since a brilliantly written page still won’t rank if bots can’t crawl it, and a technically perfect site still won’t rank if the content is thin.
| Type | What it covers | Example tasks |
|---|---|---|
| On-page SEO | The content and HTML on each page | Keyword targeting, titles and headings, internal links, helpful copy |
| Technical SEO | The site’s infrastructure and crawlability | Site speed, mobile design, structured data, sitemaps, fixing errors |
| Off-page SEO | Signals from outside your website | Earning backlinks, brand mentions, reviews, digital PR |
| Local SEO | Visibility for location-based searches | Google Business Profile, local citations, reviews, local content |
On-page SEO
On-page SEO covers everything you control on the page itself, from the words and headings to the title tag and the internal links. The goal is to make it obvious, to both readers and search engines, what the page is about and why it deserves to rank. That starts with choosing a clear topic and the keyword behind it, then writing content that truly answers the question rather than stuffing the phrase in repeatedly. Good on-page work also means a descriptive title, logical headings, helpful images with alt text, and links to your other relevant pages so visitors and crawlers can move through your site. If you want a full walkthrough, our complete SEO checklist lays out the on-page steps in order.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes work that lets search engines crawl, render, and index your site without tripping over problems. It’s the plumbing. When it’s done well nobody notices, and when it’s broken nothing else you do matters much. This includes making sure your pages load quickly, work on mobile, use a secure connection, and send clean signals through things like sitemaps, canonical tags, and structured data. It also covers fixing broken links, removing duplicate pages, and keeping your site architecture shallow enough that important pages are only a few clicks from the homepage. Our guide to technical SEO goes deeper on each of these, and a slow site is such a common drag on rankings that website speed optimization often earns a project of its own.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is about building authority and trust through signals that come from outside your own website, and backlinks are the big one. When another reputable site links to yours, search engines read it as a kind of recommendation, and a pattern of those recommendations tells Google your pages are worth trusting. The emphasis is firmly on quality over quantity, because a handful of links from respected, relevant sites does far more than a pile of low-value ones, and buying links in bulk can actively backfire. Other off-page signals include brand mentions, reviews, and the general reputation your business builds online. Our guide to off-page SEO covers the strategies that hold up, and if links are your focus, how to get backlinks walks through earning them the safe way.
Local SEO
Local SEO helps a business show up when someone searches for a product or service near them, which matters enormously for any company that serves a city, region, or service area. It leans on a slightly different set of factors than general SEO, with your Google Business Profile, local reviews, and consistent business listings doing a lot of the heavy lifting. For a plumber in Toronto or a clinic in Vancouver, ranking in the local map pack can be worth more than ranking nationally for a broad term, because the people searching are close by and ready to act. Our guide to local SEO for small business breaks the whole thing down, and Google Business Profile optimization plus solid local citations are usually where Canadian businesses see the fastest local gains.
What is the difference between SEO, PPC, and SEM?
SEO earns unpaid rankings over time, PPC buys paid placement you pay for per click, and SEM is the umbrella term that covers both. People mix these up constantly, and the distinction matters because the two approaches behave very differently on cost, speed, and staying power. SEO is slow to start and durable once it takes hold, while paid search is instant and disappears the moment the budget runs out.
| Approach | What it is | Speed | Cost model |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Earning organic rankings through content, technical health, and authority | Months to build, then lasting | Investment in work, no cost per click |
| PPC | Paid ads that appear at the top of results | Instant visibility | You pay for every click, ongoing |
| SEM | The broad category that includes both organic and paid search | Varies by tactic | A blend of both |
In practice the two work best together rather than as rivals. Paid ads can drive traffic while your SEO is still maturing, and the keyword data from a paid campaign often sharpens your organic strategy. Many businesses run both, leaning on ads for quick wins and competitive terms while SEO builds a base of traffic they aren’t renting. If paid search is new to you, our explainer on what PPC is covers how the auction and bidding side works.
Why does SEO matter for your business?
SEO matters because most buying journeys start with a search, and the businesses that show up at that moment get the first shot at the customer. When someone searches for what you offer, they’ve told you exactly what they want, and appearing there puts you in front of demand that already exists rather than interrupting someone who wasn’t looking. That intent is what makes organic search traffic so valuable compared with channels where you have to create the interest first.
There’s also the economics of it. Paid ads stop delivering the second you stop paying, but a page that ranks well keeps bringing in visitors month after month without a per-click charge. The work is front-loaded, and the traffic compounds. Over a year or two, that can turn into a meaningful stream of leads that costs far less per customer than paid channels, which is a big reason small businesses with tight budgets lean on it. A strong organic presence feeds directly into website traffic growth, and more qualified traffic is usually the first lever worth pulling.
Finally, ranking well builds credibility. Rightly or not, people tend to trust the businesses that appear near the top of search results, and showing up there alongside or above bigger competitors signals that you belong in the conversation. For a small or mid-sized company, that visibility can level a field that budget alone would tilt toward larger players.
How long does SEO take to work?
Most businesses start seeing clear results from SEO in three to six months, with the larger gains arriving over six to twelve months of steady effort. It’s slower than paid advertising by design, because you’re earning trust rather than buying placement, and trust takes time to accumulate. Anyone promising front-page rankings in a week or two is either misunderstanding how search works or hoping you do.
| Timeframe | What typically happens |
|---|---|
| Month 1 | Audit, keyword research, and fixing the most pressing technical issues |
| Months 2 to 3 | Publishing and optimizing content, early indexing, small ranking movement |
| Months 3 to 6 | Rankings and organic traffic start to climb for easier target terms |
| Months 6 to 12 | Compounding gains, more competitive terms begin to move, steadier leads |
| Beyond 12 months | A maturing base of traffic that needs maintenance more than heavy lifting |
The exact pace swings on a few things: how competitive your industry and keywords are, how established your website already is, and how much consistent work goes in. A brand-new site in a crowded market will move slower than an established site chasing a handful of local terms. The honest framing is that SEO is an investment with a lag, not a switch you flip, and the businesses that win at it are usually the ones that kept going when early results felt quiet.
How much does SEO cost in Canada?
SEO costs in Canada vary widely, and most small and mid-sized businesses budget somewhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month depending on who does the work and how competitive their market is. These are planning ranges to help you set expectations, not quotes, and the right number depends on your goals, your starting point, and whether you handle it in-house, hire a freelancer, or work with an agency.
| Approach | Typical monthly planning range (CAD) | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| DIY with tools | Roughly $0 to a few hundred | Owners with time to learn and a simple local footprint |
| Freelancer | Often several hundred to a couple thousand | Small businesses needing focused help on specific tasks |
| Agency retainer | Commonly a couple thousand and up | Businesses wanting a full strategy and ongoing execution |
| One-time project | A fixed scope, priced per project | A specific need like an audit or a technical cleanup |
Cheaper isn’t automatically better value, and neither is expensive. What matters is whether the work maps to your goals and whether the provider is transparent about what they do. Be wary of any offer that promises guaranteed rankings or an unusually low flat fee, since real SEO is custom work that takes ongoing effort. For a fuller breakdown of what drives the numbers, see our guide on how much SEO costs in Canada.
How do you measure SEO success?
You measure SEO success through a mix of signals, since no single number tells the whole story, and the ones that matter most tie back to business results rather than vanity stats. Rankings are the metric people fixate on, but a top ranking means little if it doesn’t bring traffic, and traffic means little if it doesn’t turn into leads or sales. The useful approach is to watch the chain from visibility to revenue.
| Metric | What it tracks | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword rankings | Where your pages sit for target searches | Whether your visibility is improving |
| Organic traffic | Visitors arriving from unpaid search | Whether rankings are turning into real visits |
| Impressions and clicks | How often you appear and get clicked in search | How compelling your listings are |
| Conversions | Leads, calls, or sales from organic visitors | Whether the traffic is the right traffic |
| Engagement | Time on page, pages per visit, bounce patterns | Whether visitors find what they expected |
Free tools cover most of this. Google Search Console shows your impressions, clicks, and average positions straight from Google, and an analytics tool shows what visitors do once they land. The key is to agree on what success looks like before you start, usually in terms of leads or revenue, so you’re judging the work by business outcomes rather than a rankings screenshot. Turning more of that organic traffic into customers is its own discipline, which our guide to conversion rate optimization covers in detail.
Does SEO still matter with AI search in 2026?
SEO still matters in 2026, and in some ways it matters more, because AI Overviews and AI-powered search tools decide what to show and cite by reading the same signals SEO has always been about. When Google generates an AI summary at the top of a result, it’s pulling from pages it considers helpful and trustworthy, which means the work of being clear, accurate, and well-structured is exactly what gets you referenced. The format of the results page has changed, but the underlying question has not: is your page the best answer to what someone asked?
What has shifted is the emphasis. With AI summaries answering more questions directly, the easy, low-value informational clicks are drying up, and the pages that still earn attention are the ones with real depth, firsthand expertise, and a clear point of view. That’s good news for businesses willing to produce useful, detailed content and bad news for thin, templated pages. Structured content, plain answers to real questions, and demonstrated experience are what both traditional search and AI systems reward. SEO isn’t dead, it’s just rewarding quality more strictly than it used to, which is a healthy direction for anyone doing the work properly.
How do you do SEO? A simple starting point
You start SEO by understanding what your customers search, fixing the technical basics, and publishing content that answers those searches better than what’s already ranking. You don’t need to do everything at once, and trying to usually stalls the whole effort. The sequence below is roughly how a focused first few months tend to go, and it works whether you’re doing it yourself or guiding someone who is.
| Step | What it involves | Why it comes first or later |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Keyword research | Find the terms your customers actually use | Everything else aims at these targets |
| 2. Technical check | Make sure the site is crawlable and fast | Content can’t rank on a broken foundation |
| 3. On-page work | Optimize existing pages for their best keyword | Quick wins from assets you already have |
| 4. Content creation | Publish helpful pages for gaps you found | Builds relevance and attracts links |
| 5. Authority building | Earn links, reviews, and mentions | Harder, so it layers on once the basics hold |
| 6. Measure and refine | Track results and double down on what works | SEO is iterative, not set-and-forget |
A beginner can absolutely learn the basics and make real progress, especially on a local site, and plenty of small business owners do exactly that. The point where most people bring in help is when the work outgrows the time they have, or when the competition is stiff enough that strategy and consistency start to matter more than effort alone. Running a regular SEO audit is a good habit either way, since it keeps surfacing the next thing worth fixing.
What are the most common SEO mistakes?
Most SEO problems trace back to a short list of repeat mistakes, and knowing them ahead of time saves a lot of wasted effort. The common thread is impatience or shortcuts, since SEO punishes both, and the fixes are usually a matter of doing the fundamentals properly rather than discovering some secret tactic.
| Mistake | Why it hurts | Better approach |
|---|---|---|
| Chasing keywords, ignoring intent | You rank for terms that don’t convert | Match pages to what the searcher actually wants |
| Keyword stuffing | Reads badly and can look manipulative | Write naturally and cover the topic well |
| Ignoring technical health | Great content can’t rank if bots can’t crawl it | Fix speed, mobile, and crawl issues early |
| Buying low-quality links | Risks penalties and wastes money | Earn relevant links the slow, safe way |
| Expecting instant results | Leads to quitting before SEO pays off | Commit to a realistic three to six month horizon |
| Never measuring | You can’t tell what’s working or wasted | Track rankings, traffic, and conversions from day one |
How to get started with SEO
If you’re starting from scratch, keep the first moves small and concrete. Run a basic check of how your site performs in search today, find a handful of keywords your customers really use, and pick one or two pages to improve properly rather than touching everything at once. Early, focused wins build the momentum that carries an SEO effort through the quieter early months, and they teach you how your particular market responds.
If you’d rather have a partner handle the strategy and the ongoing work, that’s the kind of thing our team does as part of our SEO services, where we start by auditing where you stand and build a plan around your goals and budget. When you’re ready to talk it through, you can get in touch with us and we’ll walk through your current search presence and where it could go, with no obligation. Many small businesses fold SEO into a wider plan, and our small business marketing page shows how the pieces fit together.
Frequently asked questions about SEO
What does SEO stand for?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the practice of improving a website so it appears higher in the unpaid, organic results on search engines like Google and Bing. The goal is to earn relevant traffic without paying for each click, by making your site useful, trustworthy, and easy for search engines to understand. Some people also use SEO loosely to mean the broader work of getting found in search, including on newer AI-powered tools.
How does SEO work in simple terms?
Search engines crawl the web to discover pages, index what they find, and then rank those pages when someone searches. SEO is the work of making your site easy to crawl, clearly relevant to what people search, and trustworthy enough to deserve a high spot. You do that through helpful content, a sound technical setup, and signals of authority like quality backlinks. Do all three well and your pages become more likely to appear near the top.
What are the three main types of SEO?
The three main types are on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO. On-page SEO covers the content and HTML of your pages, technical SEO covers the site infrastructure that lets search engines crawl and index you, and off-page SEO covers outside signals like backlinks and reputation. Local SEO is often treated as a fourth focus for businesses that serve a specific area. A healthy strategy gives attention to all of them rather than leaning on just one.
What are the 3 C’s of SEO?
The 3 C’s of SEO are commonly described as content, code, and credibility. Content is the helpful, relevant material on your pages, code is the technical foundation that lets search engines access and understand your site, and credibility is the authority you build through backlinks and reputation. It’s a simple way to remember that strong SEO needs good writing, a sound technical setup, and trust from the wider web all at once.
Is SEO dead in 2026?
No, SEO is not dead, though it has changed. AI Overviews and AI search tools now answer more questions directly, which has reduced clicks on thin informational pages, but those same systems choose what to show and cite based on helpfulness and trust. That rewards useful content and penalizes shallow pages more strictly than before. SEO in 2026 is less about gaming rankings and more about being the clear best answer, which is a healthier version of the same work.
Can a beginner do SEO?
Yes, a beginner can learn the basics of SEO and make real progress, especially on a smaller or local website. The fundamentals of keyword research, writing helpful content, and fixing obvious technical issues are learnable, and free tools like Google Search Console make it easier to see what’s working. The point where many people bring in help is when the work outgrows their available time or the competition gets tough enough that strategy starts to matter more than effort.
What is website SEO?
Website SEO simply means applying search engine optimization to a website so its pages rank better in organic search. It covers the on-page work of optimizing content and HTML, the technical work of keeping the site crawlable and fast, and the off-page work of building authority. The phrase is often used to separate the optimization of your own site from broader or off-site activities, but in practice it’s the same discipline applied to your pages.
How long does SEO take to show results?
Most businesses see clear results in three to six months, with bigger gains over six to twelve months of consistent work. The pace depends on how competitive your market is, how established your site already is, and how much effort goes in. SEO is slower than paid advertising because you’re earning trust rather than buying placement, so treat it as an investment with a lag. Be skeptical of anyone promising top rankings in a matter of weeks.
How much does SEO cost for a small business in Canada?
Costs vary widely, and many Canadian small businesses budget somewhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month depending on scope and competition. Doing it yourself with tools sits at the low end, a freelancer in the middle, and a full agency retainer at the higher end. These are planning ranges rather than quotes, and the right figure depends on your goals and starting point. Watch out for unusually cheap offers that promise guaranteed rankings, since real SEO is ongoing custom work.
Is SEO better than paid advertising?
Neither is simply better, since they do different jobs. SEO is slower to start but brings traffic you don’t pay for per click once it takes hold, which makes it cost-effective over time. Paid advertising is instant and precise but stops the moment you stop paying. Many businesses run both, using ads for quick wins and competitive terms while SEO builds a lasting base. The right mix depends on your timeline, budget, and how competitive your market is.
What is a backlink and why does it matter?
A backlink is a link from another website to yours, and search engines read it as a signal of trust. When a reputable, relevant site links to your page, it suggests your content is worth referencing, which can help your rankings. Quality matters far more than quantity, so a few links from respected sites outweigh many low-value ones. Earning backlinks naturally through good content and genuine relationships is the safe approach, while buying them in bulk can trigger penalties.
What is local SEO and do I need it?
Local SEO is the work of ranking for searches tied to a location, like a service plus a city name or a “near me” search. If your business serves customers in a specific area, you almost certainly need it, since it drives the map pack and local results where nearby buyers look. It relies heavily on your Google Business Profile, local reviews, and consistent business listings. For many local businesses, ranking well locally is worth more than ranking for broad national terms.
Do I need SEO if I run ads?
Running ads doesn’t remove the value of SEO, because the two reach people differently and complement each other. Ads give you instant visibility and control, while SEO builds durable traffic you aren’t renting by the click. Relying only on ads means your traffic vanishes the moment the budget stops, whereas a strong organic presence keeps working in the background. Most businesses get the best results from a blend, using paid search for speed and SEO for lasting reach.
How do I measure whether my SEO is working?
Watch a few signals together rather than fixating on one. Keyword rankings show your visibility, organic traffic shows whether those rankings bring visits, and conversions show whether the traffic turns into leads or sales. Free tools like Google Search Console and an analytics platform cover most of what you need. The most useful habit is to define success in business terms, usually leads or revenue, before you start, so you can judge the work by outcomes instead of a rankings screenshot.
What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
SEM, or search engine marketing, is the umbrella term that covers both organic SEO and paid search advertising. SEO is the organic half, earning unpaid rankings through content, technical health, and authority. Paid search, often called PPC, is the advertising half where you pay for placement. So SEO sits inside SEM rather than opposing it. When someone talks about SEM, they usually mean a strategy that combines organic optimization with paid campaigns.
Can I do SEO myself or should I hire an agency?
You can do a lot of SEO yourself, particularly the basics on a local or smaller site, and many owners start that way. Hiring help makes sense when the work outgrows your time, when you need a clear strategy, or when your market is competitive enough that experience changes the outcome. An agency or freelancer brings tools, process, and a plan, while doing it yourself saves money and builds your own understanding. The right call depends on your goals, budget, and how much time you can commit.
How is SEO different for Canadian businesses?
The fundamentals of SEO are the same everywhere, but Canadian businesses have a few local considerations. Targeting the right locations matters, whether that’s a single city or a national audience, and bilingual markets may call for content in both English and French. Local SEO signals like a Google Business Profile and Canadian business listings carry real weight for location-based searches. Beyond that, the core work of helpful content, a sound site, and earned authority applies just as it does anywhere.
Related articles
- Small Business SEO: A Practical Guide
- Technical SEO: A Complete Guide
- Off-Page SEO: What It Is and How to Do It
- Local SEO for Small Business
- The Complete SEO Checklist
- How Much Does SEO Cost in Canada?
Sources: keyword demand, search intent, SERP, and People Also Ask data from DataForSEO (Canada, English), October 2026. Technical fundamentals referenced from Google Search Central documentation. This article is general marketing education and not a guarantee of specific rankings or results.
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