Does Traffic Help Rankings?

Traffic help google rankings?

[jjcox]

Does anyone have scientific proof that traffic causes your site to get higher search engine listings?

If so I'd love to talk to you!

Thanks,
Jason Cox

[larryhatch]

I think most people would argue that its the other way around.
I.e. good rankings (I assume you mean SERPs positions) drive high traffic.

I can look at my traffic first, and pretty much guess how my pages ranked for the day in G.
Sharp spikes in traffic due to external factors never seemed to affect SERPs for me.

Sustained traffic due to good new links is another matter. THOSE could affect SERPs. -Larry

[digicam]

Hi, have a listen to these MSN engineers

[channel9.msdn.com...]

Half way through they discuss that a ranking factor is the number of people who click on a specific result on a page of serps.
So for a search phrase 'widgets' then if the 3rd results gets all the traffic it ranks better

that is my understanding anyway - let me know your thoughts.

cheers.

[luckychucky]

I have a very strong, but personally unresearched, belief that Google is using stickiness (ie: which sites you click, how deep you navigate, whether or not you buy there) as the huge ranking factor.

Think about it. You're starting from Google's site. They know where you start and can track where you go, and for how long. What would better determine actual relevance to a user, than actual user behavior within the presented results of a keyword search?

IMO, this one's a no-brainer. I am absolutely certain it's factored in. In fact, click traffic volume and stickiness tracking could be the paramount factor. And impossible to hack -- no matter how enterprising the SEO.

[briggidere]

how is google going to know who buys from the site. unless you are using their free tracker? what about sites that use a tel no instead of a buy online feature? does that mean they could never rank as well as a site that does sell online?

[stuntdubl]

I second digicam...even if that video doesn't answer your question, there are definitely some nuggets and insights to be had in it. Watching that video was time well spent.

[lcampers]

so do you think clicking on your site for high-ranked keywords is a good thing?

ie your site is on page 499 for a major search result and you find it and click on it, does it then rank higher the next time someone searches the same keyword?

ps is there a way to find what page your site is on (if any) for keyword searches?

[econman]

I can't imagine any SE using click data (or any other user generated data) from anything past the first 2 or 3 pages of SERPs. So few searchers ever get past the first page or two, the data on the deep pages is mostly from webmasters, academics, etc. That data would be much too flaky to be useful.

On the other hand, it would be feasible for a SE to deeply analyze "long tail" data for sites that have not yet achieved prominence.

The SE could study user behaviour when a new, or less-prominent site appears on the first page of the SERPs for an obscure, multi-word search. Conceivably, a "signal of quality" might emerge from this user-generated data, which would allow the SE to remove, or dial back filters that would otherwise apply to a new site (e.g. reducing or triggering a removal of the infamous "sandbox" effect").

In other words, if users consistently click on listings for a new site when it happens to be listed on the first page of the SERPs for "Obscure Topic Related to Bright Blue Widgets", that user response might give the SE a reason to allow the site to appear on the first page of the SERPs for the less obscure phrase "Bright Blue widgets"

Eventually the site might even emerge from obscurity and appear on the first page of the SERPs for the hugely important "Widgets" -- provided the CTR data, "stickiness" data, link growth data, and other indicators all confirm these early indicators of quality.

Just a thought experiment --- I have no idea whether, or to what extent, the SEs are actually doing this.

[jdancing]

I would guess that Google knows the average click through rate on positions 1-50 on any given search. So if a website is getting 10% more clicks than normal for that position and users are staying on the site for more than a few seconds (Google Toolbar data) that site will tend to move up in the rankings all other things being equal.