For years, Google told the SEO industry that clicks don't influence rankings.
Then, in May 2024, internal Google API documentation went public: roughly 2,500 pages covering 2,596 modules and 14,014 ranking attributes, inadvertently pushed to a public GitHub repository weeks earlier. And the code told a very different story.
Three metrics. Right there in the documentation.
The leaked documents revealed that Google's NavBoost system (the same ranking system confirmed during the DOJ antitrust trial) tracks three specific click metrics: “goodClicks,” “badClicks,” and “lastLongestClicks.”
These aren't vague references to user satisfaction; they're named variables in production code. NavBoost uses them within a rolling 13-month window to adjust rankings based on how real users interact with search results.
Rand Fishkin, who broke the story publicly, wrote that “in the last quarter century, no leak of this magnitude or detail has ever been reported from Google's search division.”
That's not hyperbole when you consider what these documents actually show.
It gets more specific.
The leak also exposed a module called Craps (yes, really) that aggregates raw click and impression signals for NavBoost. When a page accumulates enough “badClicks,” short visits where users bounce back to the search results, the resulting signals can push that page down in rankings.
The inverse is also true. Pages that earn “goodClicks” and “lastLongestClicks” — where users stay, engage, and don't return to Google looking for a better answer — get a ranking boost through NavBoost.
This is Google's own internal architecture, exposed in its own documentation — not a theory built from correlations.
Why Google denied it.
Google has long maintained that clicks are too noisy and too easily manipulated to use as a ranking signal.
Eric Lehman, a 17-year Google search engineer, testified during the antitrust trial: “Pretty much everyone knows we're using clicks in rankings.”
But Google's public-facing position remained that click data was only used for evaluation, not for live rankings.
The API leak made that position impossible to maintain. The leaked code contradicts the public statements directly.
What this means for your SEO strategy.
If you've been focused exclusively on content quality, backlinks, and technical SEO, you've been working on one side of the equation. The API leak confirmed that user engagement, specifically how people click on and interact with your search listings, feeds directly into the ranking system.
The three metrics are straightforward:
• Google wants to see that users click on your result (goodClicks)
• That they stay on your page (lastLongestClicks)
• That they don't bounce back to try a different result (avoiding badClicks)
Every click order through SerpClix generates real human behavior: genuine people searching for your keyword and clicking your listing. That's exactly the kind of click behavior these metrics were built to detect. There are no guarantees in SEO, but this is the side of the equation you can actually influence.
SerpClix uses an army of over 400,000 real human clickers to boost your organic CTR. Get started with a free trial or log in to your dashboard to set up your next click order.
Please note: there are no guarantees in search engine optimization, ever. There are innumerable factors that can affect search engine rankings. All SEO efforts can involve an element of risk. SerpClix employs real human clickers, so we think our service is far less risky than trying to use automated or robotic click methods. But, like all SEO strategies, there is an element of risk because Googleβs algorithm is unknown and subject to change at any time. For more information please see our FAQs.
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We send real human visitors from our network to your pages, so search engines see genuine engagement. Start with the service that fits what you're working on.
