Receptional_Andy - 2:04 pm on Jan 9, 2009 (gmt 0)

The original premise makes no sense at all to me. If you see your site ranked well for a major keyword, then what usually happens is:

- Lots more people see your listing
- So, lots more people click through

So, if that doesn't happen, then your site is not being shown to lots more people - thus you don't get the clicks. But the problem is that your visibility hasn't increased, even if you believe it has.

If it's a genuinely popular keyword, and your site is now highly visible, then the only way Google could "throttle" your traffic is by:

- Preventing people from clicking on your listing
- Replacing the traffic you used to get, with new traffic for the popular phrases

These things are easily measurable with even basic analytics and are not a matter of speculation.

The only other feasible alternative I can think of is that Google show your listing based on a click or time threshold. But that also means that your "ranking" have not truly improved at all. At least not for most of the people most of the time. Again, this would be easily identifiable based on analytics data, since you'd see replaced traffic for new and old keyphrases.

Is there something I've failed to understand in the throttling theory?