Does anyone know much about "click popularity?" From my understanding, click popularity means the number of times that your website gets clicked compared to others. So, if your site is on the second page of results in google for a given term, and you are getting more clicks than other sites on the same page even though they may be higher up than your site, this is one small seo factor that can give you an edge over those other sites. Is there anything to this? Also, I've read that if your website isn't "sticky" (people don't stay long), getting more clicks probably won't help much. Just wondering if anyone knows much about this. I was thinking it was maybe time to write some better title tags anyways.
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"popularity" And "stickiness"
Started by
fine0023
, Feb 26 2012 11:42 PM
7 replies to this topic
#2
chrishirst
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Posted 27 February 2012 - 06:30 AM
QUOTE
Does anyone know much about "click popularity?"
Enough to know that it is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL to do with "SEO, CTR is measured on Adwords clicks and goes towards improving the quality score.Search engines do not know how long a visitor stays on a page. It's just another load of pseudo scientific hogwash made up by people who are clueless but want to extort money from their unsuspecting clients.
#3
Jill
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Posted 27 February 2012 - 07:46 AM
QUOTE
Search engines do not know how long a visitor stays on a page.
That's not quite true.
The search engines do look at, IMO, if a site gets clicked and whether the searcher comes quickly back to the search results to clck another listing. It would be a potential signal that they didn't find what they were looking for with the first site.
#4
torka
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Posted 27 February 2012 - 09:57 AM
Unless they're somebody like me, who will click on several results in the SERPs one right after the other (opening each in a new tab) so I can easily flip from one to the other to see which one(s) answer my question. 
In which case, clicking on one then clicking another soon after doesn't mean the first wasn't the best result. I won't know which (if any) was the "best" until I've looked at all the promising candidates.
I'm guessing the smart people at Google are bright enough to figure this out, too. And I'm also guessing I'm not the only person who does this. I agree it's very likely they look at this in some fashion as one of their zillion-plus factors, but I wouldn't expect it to be a very big factor in the overall scheme of things.
fine0023, it's always a good time to write better titles. And if the new ones don't, in fact, turn out to be better... well, write some more, then test and test again. IMO, good SEO is a process.
--Torka
In which case, clicking on one then clicking another soon after doesn't mean the first wasn't the best result. I won't know which (if any) was the "best" until I've looked at all the promising candidates.I'm guessing the smart people at Google are bright enough to figure this out, too. And I'm also guessing I'm not the only person who does this. I agree it's very likely they look at this in some fashion as one of their zillion-plus factors, but I wouldn't expect it to be a very big factor in the overall scheme of things.
fine0023, it's always a good time to write better titles.
And if the new ones don't, in fact, turn out to be better... well, write some more, then test and test again. IMO, good SEO is a process.--Torka
#5
Jill
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Posted 27 February 2012 - 11:55 AM
QUOTE
I'm guessing the smart people at Google are bright enough to figure this out, too. And I'm also guessing I'm not the only person who does this. I agree it's very likely they look at this in some fashion as one of their zillion-plus factors, but I wouldn't expect it to be a very big factor in the overall scheme of things.
Agree. And it's certainly not something you should or can try to game.
But it's a good idea to make sure your pages are highly relevant and useful to the search queries that it's showing up for. If it's not, there's a real chance that Google will eventually drop it for that query.
#6
piskie
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Posted 27 February 2012 - 12:50 PM
Yes, Torka, I do that quite often when searching or researching.
In fact, I find it more common among Firefox users who were introduced to Tab Browsing ages ago and know how to make the most of it.
In fact, I find it more common among Firefox users who were introduced to Tab Browsing ages ago and know how to make the most of it.
#7
Michael Martinez
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Posted 27 February 2012 - 05:46 PM
I think the search engines can track large numbers of users' click patterns to see the standard variations (I also open many browser windows sometimes). It would be statistically inefficient for a search engine to try to determine the value of a Web document by tracking how long anyone stays on the page; but if they compiled a LOT of click data they might be able to infer something.
I suspect such a pattern would be more trustworthy if it could be confirmed by other data, however.
So far as I know, Bing will drop listings if it sees few to no clicks on them. I don't recall what Duane Forrester or anyone else from Bing may have said about estimating length of stay on site. That's not a very reliable signal for a lot of reasons, not the least being if the page only contains an image and thousands of people link to it not many people would be likely to stay very long.
I suspect such a pattern would be more trustworthy if it could be confirmed by other data, however.
So far as I know, Bing will drop listings if it sees few to no clicks on them. I don't recall what Duane Forrester or anyone else from Bing may have said about estimating length of stay on site. That's not a very reliable signal for a lot of reasons, not the least being if the page only contains an image and thousands of people link to it not many people would be likely to stay very long.
#8
chrishirst
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Posted 28 February 2012 - 03:09 PM
QUOTE(Jill @ Feb 27 2012, 12:46 PM) 
That's not quite true.
The search engines do look at, IMO, if a site gets clicked and whether the searcher comes quickly back to the search results to clck another listing. It would be a potential signal that they didn't find what they were looking for with the first site.
The search engines do look at, IMO, if a site gets clicked and whether the searcher comes quickly back to the search results to clck another listing. It would be a potential signal that they didn't find what they were looking for with the first site.
#
They ONLY "know" if the same person clicks another result, even the site logs do not show how long a user stayed on a page UNLESS the visitor clicks to a different page on the same site.
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