Last week, Google was caught removing the statement that they posted around clicks impacting local rankings. So now the SEO community is asking, is Google lying about clicks influencing rankings? What are they hiding?
Bill Slawski, the SEO patent guy, wrote a post last night putting together many of the patents Google has published around click data and Google's rankings. It is a very good read and goes through how, if Google wanted to, Google could use clicks, click through rates, pogosticking, etc within their ranking algorithm.
As Bill said, Google has said this in the past, that Google's Search Algorithm Is Not Dictated By Their Patents. True, Google has tons of patents and they probably don't use many many of them in their core ranking algorithm.
Anyway, Bill's posts always make for a good educational read.
Forum discussion at Google+.
