Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Ross Raffi on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/09/2020).

Is CTR a ranking factor?

Is CTR a ranking factor?
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Ross Raffin: I know Google says it isn`t, but there are others who have made arguments to the contrary.
  • Marty Marion: It`s definitely a banking factor. 😎
  • David Rosam: I remain to be convinced it is. But maybe tomorrow I`ll change my mind ;-)
  • Chris Boggs: Here is a Bill article https://gofishdigital.com/user-click-through-rates-and.../ and here is one covering it and the broader topic https://searchengineland.com/patent-suggests-how-ctr-time...
  • Michael Martinez: First of all, Google says they do use click data in personalized search results. So, yes, they use CTR in some rankings but not in generalized Web search.

    There are 2 reasons why they cannot use CTR for generalized Web search (no matter how badly they might want to, if one assumes they do want to).

    1) Most listings are never clicked on. The data simply doesn`t exist so there is nothing to integrate into the rankings. You can verify this with your own Google Search Console account.

    2) Real-time processing of clicks to adjust rankings is IMPOSSIBLE given their current level of technology. And Google has some pretty impressive technology. But they cannot process that much data in a real-time environment for every query (yet).

    Regarding the patent Bill wrote about:

    IT DESCRIBES A PROCESS FOR CREATING A FUNCTION.

    The function is mentioned here (7th paragraph under SUMMARY): "...User selections of search results (click data) can be tracked and transformed into a click fraction that can be used to re-rank future search results."

    This is consistent with Google`s many statements about how they use click data ("to re-rank FUTURE search results"
  • Ross Raffin: "They create models with the click data (in offline batch mode processes) and run those models through experiments. They can integrate the functions that have the best predictive success into re-ranking engines or other algorithms used to resolve queries."

    Wouldn`t this mean that if a site gets a lot of traffic, at some point in the future it will affect how the site is ranked?
  • Michael Martinez: Ross Raffin No. The models are not site-specific or query-specific. They are looking for general-purpose functions that will improve search results.

    The fastest processing technology that Google has confirmed exists is the TPUv3 pod technology. These are stacks of special processors with ungodly amounts of onboard RAM. They have enabled Google to reduce the processing time for certain types of machine learning experiments from several weeks or days to about 2 MINUTES.

    That`s incredibly fast for machine learning but not fast enough for real-time SERP processing (it`s too slow by at least 2 orders of magnitude).

    And the TPUv3 pods are only used by a small percentage of experiments. They speed up BERT and similar algorithms but those algorithms can only have an indirect impact on about 10% of queries.

    It`s just not possible for Google to rank search results in real-time on the basis of click data. It has never been possible for them to do that.

    They MIGHT be able to do it with quantum technology, assuming it becomes mature enough in about 10 years.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/09/2020).