Why click through rate doesn’t affect search rankings

There’s long been a myth that click through rate affects how well you rank in Google. In short, many people believe that if your results get clicked on frequently on Google, you’ll move up the rankings. It’s been claimed for years, and Google has always insisted that it’s not true.

In a recent Tweet, Google’s John Mueller gave a brief explanation as to why:

If CTR were what drove search rankings, the results would be all click-bait. I don’t see that happening.

We see click-bait everywhere, particularly on social media, and having the search results filled with that would be awful. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable summed it up nicely:

Yes, Google wants the title links in the search results to be representative of what the content is about but it does not want the titles to be used in a way where people would drive clicks above and beyond so that it influences rankings.

There are a lot of things that affect how well you rank on Google, and the SEO category of this site digs into many of them, but the click through rate of your listing in the search results isn’t one of them.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on November 12, 2021.