Yes, this was my understanding from a couple of years ago when I looked into it. They know what time you clicked the link in the search results to go to page X

Yes, this was my understanding from a couple of years ago when I looked into it. They know what time you clicked the link in the search results to go to page X. They also know when you hit the back button to come back to the search results. My understanding was the faster you backed out meant the less-relevant the page was. It was one of many factors in the ranking algorithm.