It might be that one of the reasons they track link clicking is to determine “bounce rate” [0] to infer how useful the result is. That is something I would want to know if I were building a search engine and wanted to verify ranking accuracy. Though I would have thought there would be better ways of tracking this than url redirection if JS is enabled.
- It’s not clear to me if google actually uses bounce rate to rank results aside from generic mention of identifying “signals that can help determine which pages demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.” [0]
- google does track sites you visit and URL redirects may be a way to achieve this.
> My Activity is a central place to view and manage activity such as searches you've done, websites you've visited, and videos you've watched. [1]
Their search results used to be great before they started doing this. In fact, they've started to suck more in the past 10 years, though probably for unrelated reasons. As the Conchords say, "what are your overheads?"
> Their search results used to be great before they started doing this
Google is in an arms race with SEO --- one Google is gradually losing. Removing relevance signals will make search results worse. That Google was able to deliver excellent results ten years ago is irrelevant today: the environment is different and if they went back to what they were doing then, results would be far worse now.
It might be that one of the reasons they track link clicking is to determine “bounce rate” [0] to infer how useful the result is. That is something I would want to know if I were building a search engine and wanted to verify ranking accuracy. Though I would have thought there would be better ways of tracking this than url redirection if JS is enabled.
0: #5 on https://www.spyfu.com/blog/improve-google-rankings/ (I tried to find a more authoritative source but didn’t have much luck. If some one can find a better one, please share.)