Here is something strange about lawyer listings on Martindale.com. I noticed that my listing included something called a “Visibility Ranking,” which is supposedly based on “the total number of weekly profile views.” Mine said that I was #1 out of 17 lawyers in my town of Rockport, Mass., and that I was #204,221 out of 886,124 total lawyers overall. Then I looked at the other lawyers in Rockport and found that each and every one of them had the exact same Visibility Ranking — each was #1 out of 17 and each was #204,221 out of 886,124.
Then I went on to check other lawyers I know in various locations around the country. Guess what? Many of them also had identical Visibility Rankings, no matter where they were. For example, Ernie Svenson is #1,156 out of 4,235 lawyers in New Orleans, while Evan Schaeffer also happens to be #1,156 out of 6,234 lawyers in St. Louis, Mo. Both also happen to share the same overall rank as me and my colleagues in Rockport — 204,221 out of 886,124. I found a number of other lawyers who all had the same overall ranking of 204,221.
Bottom line: I don’t know what this ranking is all about, but it appears to be entirely meaningless for a significant number of lawyers.