TRAFFIC
If it gets a higher click-through rate than
expected, it carries on up the search rankings
until it finds and equilibrium point.
If it’s a brand phrase, it may end up
getting more than 50% of the click-through
rate for that search result, and will eventually
end up getting a ‘six pack’ search listing.
Figure 1 is a table showing the average
expected click through rates per position on
the first page of Google’s search results.
Interestingly, back in 2010, Bing
confirmed they used click-through rate in
their ranking algorithm. While they haven’t
disclosed how extensively it’s used, its
inclusion makes this signal worthy of our
attention and interest, in my view.
● Dwell time/engagement
Another component is the amount of time
you spend on a page, having arrived there
from a search result page.
Put simply, if a user clicks through onto
a page and bounces straight out and jumps
into another set of search results, that’s
an obvious signal that the content did not
satisfy the user. When a user hangs around
on a page, Google have an indication that
page has satisfied the user’s requirement.
Or in other words: engaging content that’s
relevant means users stick around and
dwell on your page.
So you can see how important it is to
combine click-through rate and dwell time
to come up with an overall engagement
signal to help Google rank content.
Show me the proof!
I’ll start with Webmaster tools. If you go
into your own Webmaster Tools back-end,
click on “Search Traffic”, then “Search
Queries”, you will see the graph in Figure 2.
Figure 2 shows the correlation between the
number of impressions and the click-through
rate to your page. What you’re looking for
is the red line to track the blue line, meaning
that impressions and click through rate
should be more or less correlated.
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iGB Affiliate Issue 50 APR/MAY 2015
Figure 2: Webmaster Tools graph showing historic impressions
and click-through rate
Notice how they say “average position”.
Figure 3 shows number of impressions
per search position.
In Figure 3, you can see the number
of impressions and click-through rate per
position. As you probably know, Google
are constantly moving search results
around, so instead of a set ranking, they
will only give you an average ranking now.
Statistically, it makes more sense to
look at the click through rate for a number
of different positions before making a
decision to raise or lower a page in the
search results.
Of course, you have to factor in page
rank, i.e. new links coming into that page
which will also affect the algorithm. But
putting page rank aside, it’s fairly obvious
Google care about click-through rate
and position.
To help you visualise this movement
better, there is an amazing tool called
serpwoo.com which helps visualise search
rankings over time (see Figure 4).
As you can see from Figure 4, search
results do shuffle around all the time.
It’s especially obvious when you look at
position five and downwards: there is a
Figure 3: Google Webmaster Tools table showing click through
rate and position