Long Clicks – Short Clicks – Determines User’s Satisfaction
Various search engines and Google regulate search result rankings by looking at huge amounts of user data and scrutinise user activity within the results. The search engines examines large sets of user data observing a variety of things in determining user’s satisfaction with the search results which are the long clicks vs. short clicks.
Internal metric Google utilising to determine search success, is time to long click and to comprehend this metric,it is essential for search marketers to assess changes in the search landscape. Moreover it is also beneficial for optimization of policies.
Long clicks take place when users perform a search and clicks on a result, remaining on the site for a long period of time. In the ideal scenario, they do not tend to return to the search results to click on some other result or to reframe their search. They do not return back to the result set immediately in order to click on another option.
Long clicks, in general are alternative for satisfaction and success. A short click on the other hand takes place when a user tends to perform a search and clicks on a result and then returns to the search results quickly to click on another product. They are an indication of dissatisfaction and failure.
Search Engine Result Page - SERP
Short clicks is when a user performing a search gets back and forth between the search engine result page – SERP, for the search option and sites displayed within the result.
In this case, the user does not come back to the result page immediately to click on other search option or to change the search option. From the point of view of Google’s perception the outcome which ends with longer clicks successfully fulfils the search query.
Moreover, a search engine also determines the time taken between clicks as a means of satisfaction which would decrease the chances of providing results which do not deliver valuable content for a specific search query.
This data can be stored for each search query and compared to the normal short click behaviours by a SERP rank page. For instance, if Google finds that the first result for a search query tends to have a remarkable high bounce rate, this information is read as negative signal by the search engine’s algorithm.
Google – Measures Short Click – Leveraging Tracking Mechanisms
Subsequently, the search engine tends to reduce the page’s rank within the SERP in its future algorithm update. For the result to be highlighted, it would perhaps need a statistically above average short click rate.
Google tends to measure short click activity by leveraging the prevailing tracking mechanisms. The long clicks are important to Google since it provides a means to measure the satisfaction of the result established on downstream behaviour.
Google is aware that the search algorithm is still not quite smart and could tend to make mistakes. This could often lead to wrong path by forceful search engine optimization.
Feedback mechanism is provided by long clicks, a kind of human quality assertion which could be lacking in the algorithm. The talk from Google could be a part of the algorithm, though what the future holds in store remains to be seen.
