No doubt that CTR is a big mystery and controversy in the google search ranking. If you are new to SEO, then it is very simple for you to understand. Whenever a user performs a keyword search, they can click on the listing on the Google search result page. Google will count these clicks as a type of vote for the content and also lend more ranking ability to those listings.
In the same way, dwell time is how much time a person stays on a webpage after clicking on it.
“Bounce” means when one clicks on the webpage and leaves without even navigating to the other page. Whenever the bounce happens very frequently, then it means they are not finding the information satisfactory.
There are a few reasons to suspect that Google uses CTR as a ranking factor:
- Google has long-tracked clicks on its links.
- Google tracks click-on ads.
- Google disclosed in 2009 that clicking on the search result would affect the ranking under personalized search.
- An independent researcher examined click-throughs as a ranking factor and found it to be a potentially valuable method.
- Bing uses click-throughs and bounce rates as ranking factors.
- If Google convinces people that CTR is not a ranking factor, then it reduces the target for artificial click activity.
- Google AI systems could potentially use CTR and Googlers would not know if or when it was impacting rankings.