Click Through's for ranking
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Back in April of 2014, Rand performed an experiment to determine if Google clicks-throughs made a difference on rankings. He Tweeted and asked people to search on a specific term, and then click on a specific listing, to determine if the immediate clicks made a difference. Within 2.5 hours, his search listing went from #10 position to #1 position.
My question is this: If this experiment still works today, could you right click, copy link address of the SERP listing from Google's page and put it in a Facebook or Twitter post, and receive the same results? Or would this be gaming the system?
Here is an example of the link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiaqZD9-cXLAhUKyWMKHfFID70QFghYMAk&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbuzzy4shots.com%2Ffocus-pain-relief%2F&usg=AFQjCNElHaso_vXP4rWQdsaX1JdP8IItMQ&sig2=Sg9r6zSbW0pZQtb4ZbzJqg&bvm=bv.117218890,d.cGc
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Thanks Rand. I suspected so.
It was a very intriguing experiment you conducted. My take away... there are no more short cuts without getting into trouble with Google... just smart and hard work, keeping your plate clean.
Thanks for your response!
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In that case, a better experiment to improve CTR's would probably be to optimize your meta descriptions and a/b test them with SERP Turkey. There is a very good article on Moz describing the process of a/b testing and optimizing meta descriptions with the tool. It could be worth a read through if you are concerned with CTR's and rankings.
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Hi BStone - apart from the obvious (it's manipulation and might violate Google's TOS/webspam guidelines), there's also a bunch of other items to consider:
- Google has access to Android and Chrome user/usage data to see which clicks are real/not real
- The referrer string would be passed along from wherever you placed it (and it wouldn't come from a validated, Google.com address)
- Google can see search query data and knows when a query has actually hit their server (and all sorts of details about where/from whom). Artificial inflation of those, even in our tests, only had a very short lifespan in terms of influencing SERPs (see https://moz.com/blog/impact-of-queries-and-clicks-on-googles-rankings-whiteboard-friday and https://moz.com/rand/queries-clicks-influence-googles-results/ for more details)
Thus, IMO, this isn't a pragmatic or effective way of influencing Google's perceptions of clicks/CTR.
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I would assume it would be gaming the system and I do not believe Google puts as much emphasis if any on links distributed throughout social posts. However, it would be an interesting experiment though.
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