Another Newbie SE Question

[showerherbaby]

I was told before that there is no such thing as a dumb question, so here goes:) If some SE are based on the number of clicks a web site receives, would it be prudent for me to get a group of people to click on my site? Or does it not work that way?

Did I disprove the dumb question theory?


www.showerherbaby.com

[cbp]

None of the main search engines do that (I recall someone mentioning that one of the smaller ones does it or is considering doing it - even if they did, ranking would be determined by a whole range of factors and I guess there would be something in place to ignore multiple clicks from the sme IP address).

CBP

[sudhani]

Yes!!! There is nothing like a dumb question when you want to learn. Everyone found an answer for it before they can call themselves as so called experts. And as far as SEO is concerned there are definitely no experts ... everyone needs to be a student here as the SEs change their logic frequently to rank pages in order to beat the "SEO Spammers".

As far as the page clicks go: I suggest not to waste your time on this. Instead spend this time more productively to optimise the website for SEs by sticking to basic things like .. selecting right keywords, providing relavent content, getting some good links etc etc ....

[showerherbaby]

Thank you for your input. It sounded to good to be true, and you know what they say about that. I will be advertising on my vehicle, business cards, etc... and was wondering if someone types in my exact url, (since right now I am not in the main search engines) does that affect my ranking, or does one have to search for say, baby showers, then click on my site, in order for it to apply to my ranking?

I'm not sure I explained that very well, hope you can understand my question.

www.showerherbaby.com

[cyanide]

... and was wondering if someone types in my exact url, (since right now I am not in the main search engines) does that affect my ranking, or does one have to search for say, baby showers, then click on my site, in order for it to apply to my ranking?

Nope. If that was the case, everyone and their family would use auto-programs to hit their sites every 2 seconds. We'd have server crashes left-right and center, not to mention high bandwidth charges.

Could it be that this information became distorted by the time it got to you?
There are pay-per-click search engines. The higher you bid for keywords, the higher you rank in that particular SE for that particular keyword.

There is also Alexa. They track website popularity, but it's only as accurate as the users that have their toolbar installed on the browser.

[janeth]

Hi cyanide,
I do not know if it is true or not but I have herd the same thing a lot lately. I'm not sure if it is one, some or any and do not know where I read it but it was in a couple different places.
There are so many search engines it is hard to keep up with what all of them are doing. But it is not worth the time to do.

It is better to work on your site and the things you can control

[Jan Shepherd]

has arisen because of the Google Adwords system? Part of what determines which advertisement appears at the top for a given search term is how often the advert is clicked on by searchers, if I remember rightly. For example, four sites all bid the same amount on precisely the same keyphrase, but the one advert that attracts most interest is the one shown first.

However in this case you definitely wouldn't want your friends clicking your link, because you would have to pay every time they did that ;-)

Regards

[minstrel]

However in this case you definitely wouldn't want your friends clicking your link, because you would have to pay every time they did that ;-)

...or worse, your family... they charge way more than friends... ;-)

[Black Knight]

I wonder whether this rumour [...] has arisen because of the Google Adwords system? Part of what determines which advertisement appears at the top for a given search term is how often the advert is clicked on by searchers, if I remember rightly

I think it is more from those who remember DirectHit, a search engine where rankings were based on click-thrus, another alternate approach to search engine ranking from the guys at AskJeeves. DirectHit were providing some search results to HotBot (owned by Lycos) for a while, so they were not a meaningless engine.

Add in the fact that search engine toolbars allow the search engines to have a wealth of genuine user data (better than our own server logs in many respects) and you have the possibility that it is still used.

There was a time when many thought AOL used its own cache-hit figures to determine relative popularities too, at least for busy sites.

There's no evidence right now that it is used, but it is technically possible that it could be, using the toolbars from Google, AllTheWeb, Teoma, Alexa, etc, etc. Sometimes, possibility alone is enough to start a rumour. :)