Does traffic has correlation with search engine ranking?

[OWG]

Originally Posted by SkGold

OWG, can you provide any scientific test data from reputable sources (I am not saying your not a reputable source)?

Touche'

All I can say is that data collected in tests from sites that have been exposed to massive amounts of traffic from being bombed to the top of sites like Digg etc. have shown that there has been no increase in position in the serps. Beyond that nope I can not provide anything.

Also bear in mind that Google have stated to the FTC that there is ABSOLUTELY no link between adwords and Organic listings. So unless google are running a script that removes all referrals from adwords (even on the content network) from their traffic element of the Algorithm, then they would be lying to their government.

Also often when people say 'search engine', I take them to be talking about Google, as in the UK there IS no other search engine. Google have over 83% of the market share here.

[subseo]

I believe that's the traffic from search results, not from sites like Digg nor Adwords, that's what is discussed as a factor in the rankings.

I had this, totally unscientific, experience, say a year, maybe even more ago. I found google results didn't show direct links but redirects (but only on some searches I believe...long time ago anyway), so I thought they must be tracking the clicks, why else would they do it.
So I started clicking steadily on my website, which was in a very small niche that's not much searched for, and the site was pretty much stable (read "abandoned") so I know there were no new links for it at least for a year, and during experiment as well.

Before the experiment, it was ranking in 10-20. After experiment, the site moved to top 10 when I did a search from where I live (non-US), but it was still in 10-20 when doing a search through a US based IP.

Again, totally unscientific. But my common sense thinking is if they don't do it already, they should. After all if it is said that their algorithm has tens if not above hundred of various factors, I can't even imagine what all bizarre things it might include if that's true. Click-through from search results would at least make a sense (to me).

[OWG]

Google Do track clicks, they have been doing it for over 2 years now. have a look at the source code and you will see the code that says. onmousedown report the position of the link in the SERP.

It is just not known what they do with it though. I was told (by a Google employee) that it is used to measure relevance. If they bring a change to the algo, and the average clcik position goes up, then the SERP's are less relevant. If they go down, then they are more.

[SkGold]

Originally Posted by subseo

Again, totally unscientific. But my common sense thinking is if they don't do it already, they should. After all if it is said that their algorithm has tens if not above hundred of various factors, I can't even imagine what all bizarre things it might include if that's true. Click-through from search results would at least make a sense (to me).

I totally agree with you.

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Defiantly (IMO) that Yahoo and Google use it. From my experiment and from a lot of other evidence around the net I am sure (99.9) that they do.

Ya, all evidence from unscientific experiments. But can anybody show me any “scientific” () experiment on any SE algorithm factor. Do we have “scientific” prove that keywords in title increasing ranking?

On the top of SEO (that now I deem as my main profession) I have M.Sc. in chemistry. Believe me I know what is scientific experiment means and how to do it.

[pipc01]

Imo google and yahoo (google2) both use a click counter as a part of their relevancy to site verses search results. No, I am neither a guru nor an educated man, I am in fact self taught, but as google is so mysterious and clever, it makes sense that click through has some relevancy, for example when placing an adword on google, you have the choice of adding x amount of adverts, which google admits to stop showing and concentrate on the higher click through ads, if the advert returns a low click through. If it can do this with adwords, it can do this with individual sites. just an opinion.