54 replies to this topic

[projectphp]

I don't get your answer. Do you mean clicks help?

If so, how did you test that and not be seen as fraud?

[gangwisch]

In my belief Google uses the click data for Google Sitelinks and if your site is being visited a lot they allow easier navigation in the SERPS

[Jill]

In my belief Google uses the click data for Google Sitelinks and if your site is being visited a lot they allow easier navigation in the SERPS

Not sure what that means. Could you please provide more info on what you're trying to say here?

[SEOOZ]

I don't get your answer. Do you mean clicks help?

If so, how did you test that and not be seen as fraud?

Yes clicks definitely help.

How did i test this?
We built 12 sites in 3 different themes over a 12 month period (4 sites in each theme). As far as google was concerned the sites were all owned by different companies / people.

Each group of 4 sites had been optimized for that theme and were all of similar size. Without writing a thesis on the results we found, basically the sites that had more clicks from Google organic, highest average time on site and the most pages viewed, out ranked the other sites.

This would suggest that organic results are self perpetuating, protecting what Google and users see the be the best sites.

[projectphp]

Um, huh? So the sites that get the most clicks that ranked well first continued to rank best? Isn;t that sort of likely to be something other than clicks? And really, isn't the result, the extra clicks, the outcome not the tested for element?

[SEOOZ]

Um, huh? So the sites that get the most clicks that ranked well first continued to rank best? Isn;t that sort of likely to be something other than clicks? And really, isn't the result, the extra clicks, the outcome not the tested for element?

All sites being equal, YES. If a site stops getting clicks or gets less clicks it will move down the index. And of course many other factors help get you ranked as well.

The question in this post is do clicks in google help increase your sites position. Not what is the biggest factor in the algorythem that gets you ranked the highest.

It's my belief that it is a significant part of the algorithm. It makes sense. Google wants to show the most relevant results to its users. What better way to do this than reward sites that Google users find most relevant for there search query. At the end of the day its the same old story. If you have good unique content. A Well optimized site. A good clean site design (this is for mainly for users), Content that users find useful. Meta descriptions that are better and more enticing for users to click on than your competition. You will move up the index. If your site never gets clicked on it is not worthy of being in the index as Google's users dont see it to be relevant.

[gangwisch]

Not sure what that means. Could you please provide more info on what you're trying to say here?

Google Sitelinks are described here: google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334

Basically what happens when you click on a link in googles serp:
Simultaneously 2 things happen:
the link sends you to the site clicked and
there is a beacon image on the serp page that is loaded in the background using gping technology

gping stands for graphical ping notes and allows a small 1x1 "beacon" image to deliver dynamic data to the server's database quickly. A beacon image is also an IABB (Internet Advertising Bureau) Standard for displaying banner ads to make sure they are visible.

With the data collected I believe that google uses this data to see how long they spent on the site and what keyword was used and what they were ranked in the SERPS.

Now I am not saying that this will improve your rank in the SERPS, I have a belief that there is some metric that Google uses to determine if this is a worthy site.

The main way they test for duplicate clicks is your ip address and my assumption is that they don't allow proxies to be counted.

Overall, I am saying that I believe that Google uses the SERP Link Click for one of their millions of metrics to rank a site. I don't think that is as important as the title tag!

[projectphp]

I don't agree with the conclusion.

The reason you track is not to use tracking results directly, but to decide if what you are doing is working. In other words, tracking is more likely a measure, not a factor.

The number of clicks a link gets is likely to be a test for good or bad results that would be used to feedback into new algorithms, but as a direct factor itself? I doubt it, and until anyone can suggest a way that it makes sense to do so (clicks per day? Per Week? How long?), I'll remain on the "no" side.

[SEOOZ]

I don't agree with the conclusion.

The reason you track is not to use tracking results directly, but to decide if what you are doing is working. In other words, tracking is more likely a measure, not a factor.

The number of clicks a link gets is likely to be a test for good or bad results that would be used to feedback into new algorithms, but as a direct factor itself? I doubt it, and until anyone can suggest a way that it makes sense to do so (clicks per day? Per Week? How long?), I'll remain on the "no" side.

Well then we will agree to disagree.

Most of the sites i optimise rank 1st for highly competitive keywords using strategies based on the above so i think that i know what i am doing. I dont really worry about the sites below me that much but focus on making the my site better and staying one step ahead. One site in particular (site x) ranks 1st for 12 of the top 20 keywords and top 3 for the rest in an industry that is dominated by very rich companies with huge SEO budgets.

A note on Google site links. site x also has Google site links for six of the those highly competitive keywords. I can also defenitly say that google site links are based on the amount of traffic you get for a keyword compared to your competitors. If you had access to the stats that i do you would find it hard to dispute. Once again based on what i have seen (and believe) the % of clicks for that keyword helps get site links. Most google site links you see are brand related these 6 are not.

[daniel]

Very difficult to determine whether it's causation or simply correlation. Therefore, as has been said, only Google knows.

I think if they do use click-throughs as part of their algorithm, then it's a minute part and the time and effort spent worrying about it or trying to manipulate it could be focused on far more productive areas.

[scouseflip]

Seems to me that clicks would not be a particularly useful metric for Google to use to determine how useful/relevent a site was. I am forever clicking a link that the title suggests is what I'm looking for, only to hit the back button seconds later when I find a poor quality page behind the link. I see clicks are a reflection of the sucess of a)position and b)your ability to write an enticing title/description (and to get that description to apear in the serp's), not of the quality of the page that lies in wait at the other end of the link.

I'd have thought that the number of returning users or the amount of time spent on a site would be a better indictation of quality and I'm not sure that there is an accurate way for Google to measure this. As such I certainly don't think they should be using clicks as a measure (even ignoring the opportunity for affecting the results through automated or other means) and would be very suprised to learn that they were.

[Jill]

Seems to me that clicks would not be a particularly useful metric for Google to use to determine how useful/relevent a site was. I am forever clicking a link that the title suggests is what I'm looking for, only to hit the back button seconds later when I find a poor quality page behind the link.

Clickthroughs alone would not be a good measurement, however, I believe they also attempt to measure time on site too. So if you come right back to the SERPs and click to other sites, it shows the first wasn't relevant to the search query (at least for that particular user). If you don't come back to the SERP, then presumably, the searcher found what they were looking for.

[torka]

But with tabbed browsers and no access to site stats (unless the site in question is running GoAn, maybe), they can't even measure time on site accurately. Not that anybody can, really, but you're in a better position to at least give it a shot if you have access to the site logs or other analytics, which Google does not for a whole bunch of sites out there.

The popularity of GoAn notwithstanding, they haven't achieved 100% coverage... yet.

I use FF and IE7, both of which offer tabs. When I'm searching for something (not for a specific site, but information or a product that might be found at multiple places), I tend to click on however many results from the first, maybe even the second or third, page(s) that look "promising," opening each in a new tab. One right after the other, just working my way down the SERPs until I see the quality of the results obviously drops off or I judge I've got enough samples that it's likely one will fill the bill.

If I find what I want when I go back and review the tab contents, great. If not, I have a "multi-search" toolbar in FF, and I'll more than likely go there and start a whole new search rather than open up that original Google SERP page and refine the results from there. In fact, I may have already closed the tab that contained the original SERP by then.

So, depending on how you look at it, I always "click right back" to the original SERPs no matter how relevant and useful the pages I've selected might be (if you decide each consecutive click means I've visited that page and am now immediately coming back to look for another because the first page was crap -- an incorrect assumption, of course, but one which might appear reasonable considering the click behavior viewed in a vacuum) -- OR -- I never click back to the original SERPs no matter how irrelevant and useless the pages I encounter turn out to be (if you correctly deduce what I'm doing with the initial clicking behavior, and you're sitting there waiting for me to come back and refine my search criteria on that same SERP, which I almost never do).

I think the folks at Google are smart enough to figure out the inherent issues with using those measurements in any significant way to actually influence rankings. I'm guessing at least a few Googlers use FF for browsing, themselves, and I can't imagine I'm the only person in the world who's discovered this handy little multi-tab search method.

Not to mention how simple it would be for somebody to boost their pages' ranking simply by hiring people to click on those pages in the SERPs for desirable key phrases, never returning to the original SERP (therefore leaving Google to think -- should they be measuring something like this -- that the page in question was completely relevant to that searcher's query such that no further searching was necessary).

If it's a GoAn site, you then close the loop by having these paid shills click through to an internal page or two, so Google (if they're looking) can see these "searchers" further exploring a -- presumably relevant and useful -- site which they reached from this -- presumably relevant and useful -- entry page. Lather, rinse, repeat for a few hours each day, using various proxies and ISP accounts to conceal who you are.

Voilá. Instant "relevance."

The folks at Google are so concerned with their results being artificially manipulated, I find it difficult to believe they'd leave such a honkin' big -- and OBVIOUS -- loophole wide open and inviting abuse. I mean, if a humble webmaster like me could come up with this plan in a matter of minutes, just think what some experienced blackhat with some mad programming skilz and a bit of time on his/her hands could devise.

Of course, I could be wrong. Google has done dumb things before, and I'm sure they'll do dumb things again in the future (as will we all, come to that). But somehow I doubt if they've been quite that dumb in this instance.

My

--Torka

[Jill]

Torka, I agree, and believe that Google would and does take all those factors into consideration when determining how much (or how little) weight to put into any clickthrough data that they may have available to them.

[gangwisch]

Seems to me that clicks would not be a particularly useful metric for Google to use to determine how useful/relevent a site was. I am forever clicking a link that the title suggests is what I'm looking for, only to hit the back button seconds later when I find a poor quality page behind the link. I see clicks are a reflection of the sucess of a)position and b)your ability to write an enticing title/description (and to get that description to apear in the serp's), not of the quality of the page that lies in wait at the other end of the link.

I'd have thought that the number of returning users or the amount of time spent on a site would be a better indictation of quality and I'm not sure that there is an accurate way for Google to measure this. As such I certainly don't think they should be using clicks as a measure (even ignoring the opportunity for affecting the results through automated or other means) and would be very suprised to learn that they were.

scouseflip,

I have had some SEO marketers tell me that Google Analytics can be used as advantageous to your ranking. Because they have all your stats to see what trends to use. How does anyone you feel about this?