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I find it interesting, that even though many people click on a google link to some page (without checking the url), see the page, in two seconds click back, and

I find it interesting, that even though many people click on a google link to some page (without checking the url), see the page, in two seconds click back, and choose a different result, that all that doesn't downgrade that pages page rank (if a user (many of them) comes back to search results in two seconds, the content was obviously garbage). Some pages, that I won't name, but one of them starts with a pin- and ends with -terest consistently get high google results while offering garbage content.

danpalmer 4y ago
It's possible that is a factor, but that some sites are just very good at boosting the other metrics, or that they provide some other kind of perceived value and are therefore up-ranked.
edgineer 4y ago
Do Google et al really not check for that?
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Of course they do. In fact, a good way to downrank a competitors pages is to do a search for them, click the result, then click back 5s later. Repeat 1000x from different google accounts. A week later, the competitor will go off the first page.
  - renonce 4y ago
    Did you try that in practice?
- thrwyndx 4y ago
  They absolutely do
luckylion 4y ago
Some people believe that it does, that's why they pay users to search for something and click through the serps & go back until they arrive at the target domain where they don't click back but stop the experiment, signalling that this page answered their question / solved their problem. I've seen some data on this, and that data was inconclusive. Sometimes it seems to work, sometimes it seems to be counter-productive, sometimes nothing happens. It's hard to truly test things in isolation, and maybe their methods were shit, but I don't think it really does anything, or maybe Google has solid ways to detect anomalies and ignore them.
kryptiskt 4y ago
I often open a bunch of the results in new tabs. Which could be interpreted as I'm unhappy with the first ones I open, but I haven't even looked at them at that point.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Well sure, but i'm sure google can detect if you clicked 5 results in five tabs, or if you've clicked on one, and clicked "back" immeditaly... if a huge amount of users stay only 2-3 seconds on a specific page and then come back, that would be a red flag for me. On the other hand, maybe some people actually like the pinterest pages in results, and i'm the weird one... who knows.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > On the other hand, maybe some people actually like the pinterest pages in results, and i'm the weird one... who knows. It isn't just you! I suspect that for certain people it's easy for them to get distracted there though.
flakeoil 4y ago
> ...comes back to search results in two seconds, the content was obviously garbage I don't think that if a user stays a short time necessarily means the content is garbage. It might also mean that the user found directly what he was looking for, such as the answer to the question. It might even mean the page is very good as it is clear and provides the answer and does not have other click-bait type content. Landing on a bad page, might require you to read and browse around and maybe after a while figure out it's garbage or you get distracted by some "interesting", but unrelated articles. But if the search engine would rank it high because of this then that would be wrong.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  This would be true, if a user then did another search for something else, or close the tab. If you got an answer, you usually don't come back and click the next link in the results.
  - Loic 4y ago
    For me the pattern changed in the past few years. Before, I would take the first good answer as the answer, they used to be of good quality. Now, I tend to look at a couple (up to 4) of results to kind of cross-validate the answer before using it. Sometimes it takes me quite some "click through the results pages" to find 4 diverse enough results to validate the answer. But looking at my kids, looking directly at the info box and considering the answer as given by God, I suppose I am an exception.
- vidarh 4y ago
  If a user clicks through and don't end up back at the search engine, there is probably a high probability they found the answer whether or not they spent a short or long time at the page. But if they click through and then two seconds later comes back to the search engine results, that seems unlikely.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    I tend to scroll down the first few pages of results and open anything that appears interesting even if it's not really relevant to what I wanted. Hopefully that doesn't look similar enough that it might impact the ratings of sites on other search engines. It's possible that the first few results got me to what I was looking for (that's far from a given these days though) but I'm clicking on a lot of other results in a short amount of time regardless.
thrwyndx 4y ago
Well, why would it downgrade pagerank which is based on web graph connectivity? You're not changing the graph in any way with your click, no? But Google definitely tracks such short clicks and considers them a bad signal, very important in ranking. Same for Yandex, search for "dwell time" (visit duration) in its code/factors.

danpalmer 4y ago

It's possible that is a factor, but that some sites are just very good at boosting the other metrics, or that they provide some other kind of perceived value and are therefore up-ranked.

edgineer 4y ago

Do Google et al really not check for that?

londons_explore 4y ago
Of course they do. In fact, a good way to downrank a competitors pages is to do a search for them, click the result, then click back 5s later. Repeat 1000x from different google accounts. A week later, the competitor will go off the first page.
- renonce 4y ago
  Did you try that in practice?
thrwyndx 4y ago
They absolutely do

luckylion 4y ago

Some people believe that it does, that's why they pay users to search for something and click through the serps & go back until they arrive at the target domain where they don't click back but stop the experiment, signalling that this page answered their question / solved their problem. I've seen some data on this, and that data was inconclusive. Sometimes it seems to work, sometimes it seems to be counter-productive, sometimes nothing happens. It's hard to truly test things in isolation, and maybe their methods were shit, but I don't think it really does anything, or maybe Google has solid ways to detect anomalies and ignore them.

kryptiskt 4y ago

I often open a bunch of the results in new tabs. Which could be interpreted as I'm unhappy with the first ones I open, but I haven't even looked at them at that point.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Well sure, but i'm sure google can detect if you clicked 5 results in five tabs, or if you've clicked on one, and clicked "back" immeditaly... if a huge amount of users stay only 2-3 seconds on a specific page and then come back, that would be a red flag for me. On the other hand, maybe some people actually like the pinterest pages in results, and i'm the weird one... who knows.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > On the other hand, maybe some people actually like the pinterest pages in results, and i'm the weird one... who knows. It isn't just you! I suspect that for certain people it's easy for them to get distracted there though.

flakeoil 4y ago

> ...comes back to search results in two seconds, the content was obviously garbage I don't think that if a user stays a short time necessarily means the content is garbage. It might also mean that the user found directly what he was looking for, such as the answer to the question. It might even mean the page is very good as it is clear and provides the answer and does not have other click-bait type content. Landing on a bad page, might require you to read and browse around and maybe after a while figure out it's garbage or you get distracted by some "interesting", but unrelated articles. But if the search engine would rank it high because of this then that would be wrong.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
This would be true, if a user then did another search for something else, or close the tab. If you got an answer, you usually don't come back and click the next link in the results.
- Loic 4y ago
  For me the pattern changed in the past few years. Before, I would take the first good answer as the answer, they used to be of good quality. Now, I tend to look at a couple (up to 4) of results to kind of cross-validate the answer before using it. Sometimes it takes me quite some "click through the results pages" to find 4 diverse enough results to validate the answer. But looking at my kids, looking directly at the info box and considering the answer as given by God, I suppose I am an exception.
vidarh 4y ago
If a user clicks through and don't end up back at the search engine, there is probably a high probability they found the answer whether or not they spent a short or long time at the page. But if they click through and then two seconds later comes back to the search engine results, that seems unlikely.
- autoexec 4y ago
  I tend to scroll down the first few pages of results and open anything that appears interesting even if it's not really relevant to what I wanted. Hopefully that doesn't look similar enough that it might impact the ratings of sites on other search engines. It's possible that the first few results got me to what I was looking for (that's far from a given these days though) but I'm clicking on a lot of other results in a short amount of time regardless.

thrwyndx 4y ago

Well, why would it downgrade pagerank which is based on web graph connectivity? You're not changing the graph in any way with your click, no? But Google definitely tracks such short clicks and considers them a bad signal, very important in ranking. Same for Yandex, search for "dwell time" (visit duration) in its code/factors.