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February 5, 2008

Can You Click on a Google Listing to Increase Your Rankings?

This question gets asked time and time again, but it's always helpful to enlighten our newcomers and refresh our seasoned folks. Over at High Rankings Forum, someone asks if you can increase your rankings by clicking like mad on the search result.

The answer, quite simply, is no.

Do you really think Google would make it that easy to get rankings?

Utilizing this method would make the system too easy to be gamed and spam sites can use their spamtastic bots to click on the links just to artificially inflate their rankings. It doesn't happen.

However, that's not to say that Google doesn't use click data at all. It just isn't clear how they use it, if at all, to impact the rankings. Only Google knows.

there are reasons to believe that usage stats are taken into consideration and probably will be moreso over time.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.



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posted Tamar Weinberg in Google Optimization at February 5, 2008 7:32 AM Comments (6)

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Comments

How many people have sat clicking google links to influence rankings? Obviously havent heard of SEO roundtable!

 

Posted by Barrie Adams at February 5, 2008 10:04

I actually sat in on a conference call with a developer and a client recently and had to listen to the developer say that "one of the things we can do to increase rankings once the site is launched is to set some people to work clicking the listings in Google. This will actually move them up to page one." Because of the client's relationship with the developer I wasn't even allowed to speak up on that one! Talk about frustrating.

 

Posted by bigtequila at February 5, 2008 10:40

Google has said in the past that they use click data for quality control feedback only.

This idea of it helping your ranking probably goes back to the old Directhit search engine, if anyone remembers them.

 

Posted by Chris Beasley at February 5, 2008 17:04

The story of the developer blithely making such an absurd statement illustrates how little about SEO even internet professionals know. It is a daunting field for most and people like the mentioned dveloper would rather immerse themselves in their code...stuff with structure, with no unexplored areas!

 

Posted by Jacques Snyman at February 6, 2008 01:07

I'd say most internet professionals know nothing about SEO/SEM. I'd also go as far to say most search marketing managers hired in house, just know how to setup campaigns in the most simplistic and basic way, unoptimized.

Did the developer mean to click on ppc ads, like Adwords? In reality, if you setup an ad, had people click on it to drive up the CTR%, you could influence its ranking.

 

Posted by SEMWorld at February 6, 2008 08:52

Those IT guys (developers) that know so much about marketing. When are companies going to get it through their minds that just because this marketing happens on the PC it does not mean it is It.

Clicking on a add can effect CTR, never thought of doing, interesting..

But clicking on your organic results well that's just dumb.

 

Posted by Goran at February 7, 2008 16:19

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