does google consider click thru rate on google searches?

[marmaladePRO]

does google consider the volume or rate of click thru on google search results pages when compiling their algo ranking? or not?
thanks :)

[JayC]

No, they do not.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Googleguy (an employee from google that posts in the boards) says that now and again they track clickthrough data....but not all the time.

[nutsandbolts]

They must really like Digital Cameras - those keywords have been tracked for over a year...

[rcjordan]

>tracked

I'll venture a guess that a deep-pocketed firm (Sony, for example) can have market research done by the plex. Search input and click-thru data on a massive scale is very valuable info to the marketing dept. It wouldn't have to involve and PII, just raw numbers.

[Rick_M]

Interesting find on digital cameras (interesting they don't track "digital camera" though). There was a brief time in the middle of this month where I saw them tracking all searches. About 15 minutes later, though, they were no longer tracking. I wonder how they use this data, if at all?

[brotherhood of LAN]

>if at all?

They must or it'd be a waste of time and resources...something that Google is no doubt scarce of anyway :)

Why?

Knowing what 150 million queries are, by whom, from where, with what browser....etc

The Click-thru info that Google collects could IMO almost sum up "life on the Internet" and who uses it almost down to a T.

Funny one with the digi cams....at a guess either a backhander (of some sort ;) ) or its a metric for the algo. Of course, being an ethical engine it will be the latter :)

[dantheman]

How can you tell they're tracking "digital cameras"? I don't quite follow...

[Brett_Tabke]

>track

Easily. Cache page hit rate.

[pleeker]

How can you tell they're tracking "digital cameras"? I don't quite follow...

Look at the link for each site and compare it to the links on other searches. The links on "digital cameras" have all kinds of scripts/extras tagged in there.

[dantheman]

Aha! Thanks to both. I hadn't noticed that before.

[JayC]

does google consider the volume or rate of click thru on google search results pages

To be clear, in consideration of how this thread has developed, the fact that they track clickthru on some terms does not necessarily mean that clickthru rate figures into ranking.

[Chris_R]

They have stated before they might use it to determine how "happy" people are with the rankings.

The code appears every now and then for probably almost everyone.

This digital cameras thing is the first I have heard of it appearing for every search.

As JayC said - there is no reason to believe this is being factored into the rankings - if Ihad to guess - I would say it is NOT.