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Personally I don't think that more clicks will help the general SERPs. Although, I can see it in a paid program that considers CTR.
The reason I ask is that I have a client who is under the impression that the more clicks there are to her site from Yahoo the better the site will perform in the rankings. I'm trying to either disprove or support her position and need something tangible to do so.
If any knows of a source I can reference for her so she can see it with her own eyes I would appreciate it. I looked through Yahoo but couldn't find anything specific enough.
Thanks.
Don't laugh but...
Not sure why anyone would laugh. Using click activity to help shape SERPS is almost as old as search engines themselves. All search engines track what their users click on, so it isn't much of a stretch to draw the conclusion that the information collected will be used in some way.
As far as finding any printed material from Yahoo stating that they track clicks as part of their algo, I don't think you'll have much luck. Click popularity is something that is fairly easy to manipulate. It wouldn't make much sense to tell the world about it.
All search engines track what their users click on
function clk(el,ct,cd) {if(document.images){(new Image()).src="/url?sa=T&ct="+escape(ct)+"&cd="+escape(cd)+"&url="+escape(el.href)+"&ei=sql2QcaYAoPmaKzIsOgP";}return true;}
No they don't. Look at their source code. You will find some JavaScript that logs what you click on.
WebGuerrilla, I guess you've got some special priviledges here at WW as when I started a thread on that when Google made the mistake of placing it in the URL's instead of javascript it got deleted and I got banned for four months.
It wouldn't make much sense to tell the world about it.
Agreed, and even if it were true, discussions on it would only make things worse just like CJ's new linking techniques (ssshhh! nuff said ...)
WebGuerrilla, I guess you've got some special priviledges here at WW
Duh.... Being an Admin and the Mod of both this forum and the Google forum does come with a few privileges not avaialble to the general membership.
when I started a thread on that when Google made the mistake of placing it in the URL's instead of javascript it got deleted and I got banned for four months.
I'm not going to address the getting banned part, since that is something covered in our TOS.
As far as placing tracking in the urls, I don't think there was any mistake. Google used to occasionally run visible tracking codes in the urls. When it would happen, we would get a flood of posts about Google's new click tracking. Then, about a year ago [webmasterworld.com], they switched to the hidden JS method.
I was talking with another friend about this and he thought that, yes, the number of clicks to a web site would have an impact, but that there would most likely be some kind of filtering so that a large number of clicks from one IP would only register as one. In other words, all the clicks from one IP count as one click so that someone can't just sit there and keep clicking on their site to try and move it up in the rankings. They would have to do it from many different computers, all with different IP's, for them to count. Any thoughts on this theory?
