16 ms·

I don't think it necessarily shows that. Their good ranking could be completely unrelated to bouceback.

purplepatrick 5y ago
I agree. Tons of sites employ the bounce-back avoidance tactics, and these don’t particularly help their ranking (in fact, lots on non-ranking sites do it — presumably just to keep you on the page)
deleted 5y ago
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wokwokwok 5y ago
Who knows? It's a black box after all. ...but, you know. Can you see anything else they're doing that would give them that kind of ranking? These pages are just piles of crap, and google is pretty good at filtering that sort of stuff out. If it was that easy, google would be filled with spam everywhere. The chance that someone did something random thats very uncommon (block back) and it happened to be a super effective signal to google seems: a) like an edge case they didn't think of b) like it'll get fixed pretty fast c) not that unlikely. Compared to, say, the idea that some random spammers have built a network of incredibly sophisticated ML-generated pages that can subvert googles algorithms which seems: a) not substantiated by any obvious content on the pages b) requires a very high level of sophistication which seems totally lacking c) very unlikely ...but I mean, who knows right? We're all just speculating. I guess it'll get fixed soon, and we'll never know.
- Miraste 5y ago
  Everyone and their mother blocks back buttons. Major news sites do it. There is no way that's what's ranking them this high.
  - chopin 5y ago
    Sites should be punished into oblivion for doing this. Why do browsers even allow it? Is there a legitimate use-case for this? I am maintaining an SPA and the only thing I do is trying to not pollute history. But I'd never try to block the back button.
    - ma2rten 5y ago
      I think a legitimate use-case is asking for confirmation before leaving the page when filling out a form so that the user doesn't loose their data.
      - chopin 5y ago
        But this can be achieved with other means. I have exactly this on my SPA.
soheil 5y ago
I wonder why Yandex opens every link in a new window. How can they track bounceback?
- adventured 5y ago
  You could do a slightly more difficult, less direct sequence check on the specific user. If they circle back around to Yandex in N time and go hunting for the same query or similar query, then you can rank the prior attempts as not having been ideally helpful (downrank the result/s they clicked through to when they last searched for that query two minutes ago).
  - soheil 5y ago
    Makes sense, does DDG do the same? If yes isn't that against their "We don't track users" mantra? If no how do they improve their results while missing such a powerful signal?
    - adventured 5y ago
      I would be fairly certain that DDG isn't itself tracking users in a manner that they can use that ranking approach. They don't need to. If you do a search for the same terms in DDG vs Bing, you'll find that the results are very similar. DDG lets Microsoft do the dirty work of abusively tracking users to max out on ranking factors, and then DDG reaps the benefit. DDG doesn't need to get its hands dirty, because someone else is doing so much of that for them. By leaning so heavily on Bing, DDG is a blood diamond merchant of privacy. They might not own the mines or directly command the labor, however they're quite happy to buy the blood diamonds to further their own profit afterward. And DDG's users go along with the scheme, because buying into the con helps them sleep better at night. It works like this mentally: those users over there (at Bing) are having their human right to privacy violated, I know it's going on, and I directly benefit from the search data training as I use DDG, but hey at least it's not me being abused, so I can do my virtue signal dance and sleep well at night comfortable in my compartmentalization.
      - 5y ago

I agree. Tons of sites employ the bounce-back avoidance tactics, and these don’t particularly help their ranking (in fact, lots on non-ranking sites do it — presumably just to keep you on the page)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wokwokwok 5y ago

Who knows? It's a black box after all. ...but, you know. Can you see anything else they're doing that would give them that kind of ranking? These pages are just piles of crap, and google is pretty good at filtering that sort of stuff out. If it was that easy, google would be filled with spam everywhere. The chance that someone did something random thats very uncommon (block back) and it happened to be a super effective signal to google seems: a) like an edge case they didn't think of b) like it'll get fixed pretty fast c) not that unlikely. Compared to, say, the idea that some random spammers have built a network of incredibly sophisticated ML-generated pages that can subvert googles algorithms which seems: a) not substantiated by any obvious content on the pages b) requires a very high level of sophistication which seems totally lacking c) very unlikely ...but I mean, who knows right? We're all just speculating. I guess it'll get fixed soon, and we'll never know.

Miraste 5y ago
Everyone and their mother blocks back buttons. Major news sites do it. There is no way that's what's ranking them this high.
- chopin 5y ago
  Sites should be punished into oblivion for doing this. Why do browsers even allow it? Is there a legitimate use-case for this? I am maintaining an SPA and the only thing I do is trying to not pollute history. But I'd never try to block the back button.
  - ma2rten 5y ago
    I think a legitimate use-case is asking for confirmation before leaving the page when filling out a form so that the user doesn't loose their data.
    - chopin 5y ago
      But this can be achieved with other means. I have exactly this on my SPA.

soheil 5y ago

I wonder why Yandex opens every link in a new window. How can they track bounceback?

adventured 5y ago
You could do a slightly more difficult, less direct sequence check on the specific user. If they circle back around to Yandex in N time and go hunting for the same query or similar query, then you can rank the prior attempts as not having been ideally helpful (downrank the result/s they clicked through to when they last searched for that query two minutes ago).
- soheil 5y ago
  Makes sense, does DDG do the same? If yes isn't that against their "We don't track users" mantra? If no how do they improve their results while missing such a powerful signal?
  - adventured 5y ago
    I would be fairly certain that DDG isn't itself tracking users in a manner that they can use that ranking approach. They don't need to. If you do a search for the same terms in DDG vs Bing, you'll find that the results are very similar. DDG lets Microsoft do the dirty work of abusively tracking users to max out on ranking factors, and then DDG reaps the benefit. DDG doesn't need to get its hands dirty, because someone else is doing so much of that for them. By leaning so heavily on Bing, DDG is a blood diamond merchant of privacy. They might not own the mines or directly command the labor, however they're quite happy to buy the blood diamonds to further their own profit afterward. And DDG's users go along with the scheme, because buying into the con helps them sleep better at night. It works like this mentally: those users over there (at Bing) are having their human right to privacy violated, I know it's going on, and I directly benefit from the search data training as I use DDG, but hey at least it's not me being abused, so I can do my virtue signal dance and sleep well at night comfortable in my compartmentalization.
    - 5y ago