Is click-through rate actually a Google ranking factor? Or is it just a theory that SEO people like to argue about?
We've spent years collecting evidence on this question. Here's what we know — in Google's own words.
Google's own patent says so.
"[...] user reactions to particular search results or search result lists may be gauged, so that results on which users often click will receive a higher ranking."
Patents don't prove a system is in production, of course. But they do prove that Google has invested serious engineering effort into using click data for ranking purposes.
Google engineers have said so.
"[...] using click and visit data to rank results is a very reasonable and logical thing to do, and ignoring the data would have been silly. [...] It's pretty clear that any reasonable search engine would use click data on their own results to feed back into ranking to improve the quality of search results. Infrequently clicked results should drop toward the bottom because they're less relevant, and frequently clicked results bubble toward the top."
— Google engineer, via Quora
That's about as direct as it gets.
Google testified to it under oath.
"The ranking itself is affected by the click data. If we discover that, for a particular query, hypothetically, 80 percent of people click on Result No. 2 and only 10 percent click on Result No. 1, after a while we figure out, well, probably Result 2 is the one people want. So we'll switch it."
— Udi Manber, Google's former chief of search quality, FTC testimony
Testimony from Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt in the same proceedings confirms that click data is important for many purposes — most importantly, providing "feedback" on whether Google's search algorithms are returning high quality results.
It's been proven in practice, too.
A few years back, Moz founder Rand Fishkin ran a live experiment. He asked his audience to search for a specific term and click on his result, which was sitting at position #7 on Google. The result moved from #7 to #1 in under 3 hours — purely from the surge in real human clicks.
So where does that leave you?
CTR is not the only ranking factor — far from it. Content quality, backlinks, site speed, and dozens of other signals all play a role. But the evidence strongly suggests that CTR is one of those signals, and it's one that most SEO strategies completely overlook.
That's the opportunity. While your competitors focus exclusively on content and backlinks, CTR is a lever that very few people are pulling.
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.