Search rankings are something that every website owner is always aware of. Everybody wants to be on the first page of the search results of Google. Because of this, people have always been searching for the secret formula to appear on the first page. One of these things has been the CTR or Click-through Rate.
But Search Ranking optimized by CTR?
However, Google has said many different times that that’s not the complete truth. February 2019, Britney Muller of Moz, found some information in the tools in the “Others” section of Google, stated that CTR was important. However, a couple of weeks later, Gary Illyes from Google stated that CTR was not important.
But this is not something new… we could go even back in 2008 when CTR wasn’t even called like that. Back then, called bounce rate (sort of) was a metric that many people thought was useful to rank a website, until Matt Cutts from Google stated that the metric was an important ranking factor. People used to think that Google was tracking when people clicked on a search result and then clicked back. However, this was myth-busted as well.
After many years, the story goes on.
In 2022… the story starts all over again. People keep saying CTR is a decisive ranking factor. Then the machine starts all over again over the web. So, is this time for real? Is this time for real?
Before this stuff started to soar again, John Muller from Google appeared to give the clear word from Google. He stated that he doesn’t see CTR as a ranking factor for Google. He stated on Twitter:
“If CTR were what drove search rankings, the results would be all click-bait.
I don’t see that happening.”
Search Rankings: What can we take from this?
Google wants you to use title links in the search results to make things attractive to the users of the search engine. Also, Google wants to have the title to truly represent what the content is about. The word clickbait is something that should make a strong statement about how Google dislikes people that uses misleading titles.
Remember, what it’s important now is the same thing that has always been important: the user experience.
