Does Search Volume Directly Effect Organic Search Result Rankings?

[tatermarketing]

For example, if 20,000 people searched for "seomoz toasters," do you think a page on seomoz.org that mentioned toasters would begin to rank well for the query "toasters"?

[tatermarketing]

Not just search volume mind you. Do you think mentions on sites around the web have an impact as well?

[EGOL]

Yes.  That's what I believe.

[tatermarketing]

Do you think volume of brand / domain mentions and co-occurrence influence organic rankings as well?

[tatermarketing]

Your premise sounds good in a perfect world.

There is a featured post by Rand that asks how to manipulate Google search suggestions.

I believe these same tactics could be used to skew organic results as well.  Some tactics suggested were...

Mechanical Turk

Offline Advertising

Online Advertising

For example, if semoz.org had 20,000 Turkers a month search for Seomoz Toasters, The legitimate toaster site may not stand a chance because CTR and bounce rates have been manipulated.

[Highland]

Let's say the top page for seomoz toasters is a site on seomoz.org that happens to talk about toasters (say a youmoz). It's got the right keywords and it's on a popular site. But Rand Fishkin has started a Cafepress store that sells seomoz toasters. Being a busy guy, he mentions this on his blog but forgets to link to it. So people turn to Google. People get served seomoz.org as #1. Google doesn't read Rand's blog (like you or I do) so it links to seomoz.org. But you and I, we want that toaster, not some guy talking about link building for toasters on seomoz. So either you will click into seomoz and bounce out, or just click #2, the Cafepress store. And 80% of the people who click into Cafepress never come back. That tells Google that people are finding what they're looking for at #2 and, by the power of Matt Cutts, Cafepress becomes #1 for "seomoz toasters", based on the traffic patterns Google observed.

In a shorter term, this is called "bounce rate".

So to get back to your question, volume tends to make Google notice term traffic trends (like bounce rate) faster. I don't know that this applies to other terms. "seomoz toasters" is a fairly specific term (it's not terribly common), while "toasters" are highly general. You could have people who want the seomoz toaster so badly that they search "toaster" and click to the seomoz site in that result, but that's really unnatural. Most would just search the long tail.

[EGOL]

I am saying what I believe based upon observation....    and not something that I have proven by testing.

I believe that brand mentions and domain queries are awesome powerful.

I had a site that was getting a few thousand queries per month that included the domain.   That site was redirected to a better domain and rankings dropped for those queries that used to include the domain.

However, visitors learned the new domain and within a few months a few thousand queries that included the domain were coming in.... and rankings went back to normal.

This isn't "proof" but enough to make me think that domain queries are awesome.