


However, there are a lot of good reasons to believe Googlers when they tell you what does or does not influence search rankings. What would you say the most controversial ranking factor is? As in, is it, or isn't it? Not counting "Helpfulness" for this!- Chris Silver Smith August 29, 2022 All of these signals center upon the click to listings in the search results. “Dwell time” is also how long the user may linger on the webpage before clicking elsewhere or back to the search results. The assumption is that if a bounce happens too rapidly, the user may have found the page’s content unsatisfactory for their query. Similarly, “dwell time” would be counting how long one stays on a webpage after clicking through to a page from the search results.Ī “bounce” happens when one clicks through to a webpage and leaves without navigating to another page. Google could count those clicks as a type of vote for the content in the results and lend more ranking ability to those listings that draw more clicks for the keyword in question. Once a user performs a keyword search, they can then click on a listing on Google’s search results page. If you are newer to SEO, the concept of clicks or click-through rate (“CTR”) being ranking factors is simple to explain.

I present to you everything Google has ever said about this, along with some observations and opinions. For a long time, the SEO community has debated: is the click-through rate (“CTR”) of search results listings a ranking factor? Or the closely related “bounce rate” and “dwell time”? It’s the biggest mystery and controversy of Google’s search ranking algorithm.
