What Impact Search Satisfaction Of Users Can Create On Click Through Rate (CTR)?

Click through rate is a very important factor for consideration, in analysing the quality of information retrieved by the users. After google introduced  time-to-long-click(TTLC) in 2013, google has revealed many research papers that gives important details on measuring the complexity of search quality due its evolving nature. 

The most noteworthy of them is:

• direct answers
• positional bias
• expanding ad results
• SERP features
• SERP layout variation.

These above mentioned factors have varied effects on how users interact and its consequent effect on click through rate on google result query. Google does provide different click models that lays some expectation for users should click based on search type and position. This kind of information helps in understanding results and help google do better job and satisfaction for all searches.

Impact of search satisfaction

According to eminent fremont SEO professionals, search satisfaction is highly important in reframing the understanding of search result clicks beyond CTR and TTLC and give better focus on search satisfaction of the users.

Google in 2016 released a publication called incorporating clicks, attention and satisfaction in to search engine result page evolution model. This article gave an understanding that web pages are just a simple potential part of entire experience of the users. This paper attempted to use the metrics from the clicks, users attention and satisfaction to analyse how results performed for users and also easily predict the users action. 

The paper also introduced that the type of searches this model is useful is long tail informational searches. The model looks at:

• Attention: This model that looks at rank, serp item type, and the location of various elements on the page in conjunction with clicks, mouse movement and satisfaction labels.
• Clicks: The click probability model takes into consideration the account of SERP positioning and the knowledge that a result must have when it is clicked.
• Satisfaction: satisfaction model uses search quality rating along with users interaction level with various search elements. This way it defines the overall utility of the users in a page.

Is clicks really needed?

Seo salt lake city experts points out a very interesting aspect of this research. They explains that this research holds the concept that search results does not actually needs to receive a click to be really useful. Users may easily receive their information from search result and does not necessarily requires clicking through result.

Another very important takeaway from multiple research paper is the importance of quality raters data in the training model to predict users satisfaction. However, none of them should be considered having a direct impact on the clicks, attention or any other users generated results which can create an effect on search result.

We can also find several SEO test with mixed results that proves the click impact on ranking. At minimum we can find a temporary lift which suggest that this kind of metrics can be used in training of internal systems which can help in predicting the ideal position in search results.

Click model

A software engineer from google research europe Aleksandr Chuklin, published a paper in 2015 which deeply evaluated various click models for web searches in the world. This paper became really helpful in identifying the various click models as well as get the respective strength and weakness for each model. A few noteworthy points from this paper are:

• It looks at all results as equal
• It looks at result that would have been reviewed( from top to bottom)
• It looks at multiple click single sessions
• It looks at perseverance after a click (TTLC)
• It looks at the distance between current click and last click document to predict the SERP browsing.

These points clearly depicts that click models are really useful to google beyond users satisfaction, as it helps to understand the type of search made. Navigational queries as usually the most frequent queries in google and click model can be used in these to determine navigational as contrast to informational and transactional queries. The click through rate of navigational queries is much more predictable than transactional or informational queries.

Conclusion

The understanding of click model and the way google uses it to evaluate the quality of search result can be a great way to analyse the CTR as well as the SEO efforts when reviewing google search console and search analytics data.

Another very important concept that should be understood here that google has evolved over the years that there are many things which impact clicks rather than compelling simply on title tag.

Having the understanding for the importance of search satisfaction to google, SEO experts can use it to optimize the search result by:

• Investigating whether CTR can directly affect searches in a significant way. Even if it affects, the impact would be more likely be on long tail non transactional searches.
• Google always look for giving better user experience. Your efforts should also focus on delivering great users experience
• Get the complete understanding of search quality evaluator guideline. Inspect the design of your site, how it is written and developed can affect the judgement of google about your site expertise, authority and trust.