[Live Case study] CTR Manipulation Vs Link Building

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bartosimpsonio said:
This is exactly right IME.

The MS-component based bots out there that use a web component or fake browser to click serps is useless.

But real human clicks and some random browsing are definitively effective. Remember the chrome browser is sending telemetry to google.
Click to expand...

Wait seriously? So Chrome tracks your mouse the entire time you're using it? I've never heard this before.. I thought it was just timing between web page opening and clicking on a link to determine if you were a bot.
 
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JimR said:
Wait seriously? So Chrome tracks your mouse the entire time you're using it? I've never heard this before.. I thought it was just timing between web page opening and clicking on a link to determine if you were a bot.
Click to expand...

You thought Google just released a browser, 2 operating systems and having tracking code on basically every website because they are just being nice?

That's cute.
 
JimR said:
Wait seriously? So Chrome tracks your mouse the entire time you're using it? I've never heard this before.. I thought it was just timing between web page opening and clicking on a link to determine if you were a bot.
Click to expand...

Exactly what Ste said. Google was a major sponsor of Firefox, billions of U$ invested. Then they suddenly invested billions more into their own browser with its own rendering engine and its own javascript engine. Wow, they reinvented the web browser! Why? For free? They like programming so much they went and threw billions of U$ out the window? Nope.

After Chrome came out, Google knew what people were doing online - THAT's when the SEO game really changed. Google then knew how much time people spent on sites, their habits, their browsing history and THAT went into the ranking factors. Most link spam and PBN's are given away by folks using Chrome and Gmail and so on.

I have found so many interesting "features" while looking at the internals of Chromium. Plus : Chrome has proprietary encrypted modules in it not present in Chromium. What are they? What do they do?

When you start Chromium and look at the process list, you can see the full command used to start it, it has a unique ID attached to it. That unique ID is yours forever, when you move your stuff, sync, and so on, you are being tracked like a lab mouse.

Furthermore, when you type into Chrome, they can take your typing timing signature and the URL prediction sends all your addresses to Google. And if you're crazy enough to sync your bookmarks and your phone, then they have all your contacts, routes, maps, typing pattern, use habits and everything else about you.

You still using Gmail and Chrome?
 
bartosimpsonio said:
Exactly what Ste said. Google was a major sponsor of Firefox, billions of U$ invested. Then they suddenly invested billions more into their own browser with its own rendering engine and its own javascript engine. Wow, they reinvented the web browser! Why? For free? They like programming so much they went and threw billions of U$ out the window? Nope.

After Chrome came out, Google knew what people were doing online - THAT's when the SEO game really changed. Google then knew how much time people spent on sites, their habits, their browsing history and THAT went into the ranking factors. Most link spam and PBN's are given away by folks using Chrome and Gmail and so on.

I have found so many interesting "features" while looking at the internals of Chromium. Plus : Chrome has proprietary encrypted modules in it not present in Chromium. What are they? What do they do?

When you start Chromium and look at the process list, you can see the full command used to start it, it has a unique ID attached to it. That unique ID is yours forever, when you move your stuff, sync, and so on, you are being tracked like a lab mouse.

Furthermore, when you type into Chrome, they can take your typing timing signature and the URL prediction sends all your addresses to Google. And if you're crazy enough to sync your bookmarks and your phone, then they have all your contacts, routes, maps, typing pattern, use habits and everything else about you.

You still using Gmail and Chrome?
Click to expand...
What browser are you using kind dear sir ? Please help.
 
bartosimpsonio said:
Exactly what Ste said. Google was a major sponsor of Firefox, billions of U$ invested. Then they suddenly invested billions more into their own browser with its own rendering engine and its own javascript engine. Wow, they reinvented the web browser! Why? For free? They like programming so much they went and threw billions of U$ out the window? Nope.

After Chrome came out, Google knew what people were doing online - THAT's when the SEO game really changed. Google then knew how much time people spent on sites, their habits, their browsing history and THAT went into the ranking factors. Most link spam and PBN's are given away by folks using Chrome and Gmail and so on.

I have found so many interesting "features" while looking at the internals of Chromium. Plus : Chrome has proprietary encrypted modules in it not present in Chromium. What are they? What do they do?

When you start Chromium and look at the process list, you can see the full command used to start it, it has a unique ID attached to it. That unique ID is yours forever, when you move your stuff, sync, and so on, you are being tracked like a lab mouse.

Furthermore, when you type into Chrome, they can take your typing timing signature and the URL prediction sends all your addresses to Google. And if you're crazy enough to sync your bookmarks and your phone, then they have all your contacts, routes, maps, typing pattern, use habits and everything else about you.

You still using Gmail and Chrome?
Click to expand...

Is Firefox not doing the same thing then? And does this mean Google doesn't get a lot of metrics when you search on Google using Firefox or does the Javascript still track just about everything?
 
Ste Fishkin said:
Since @macdonjo3 launched his CTR manipulation service I've been waiting for a real review.

Not because I give a fuck or I'm excited about it or anything, I just want to see if it works.

Unfortunately the only reviews I've seen are from people I've never heard of or blog posts that Josh himself shares... I don't really totally trust anything he's done or shared or I've seen.

I'm not calling Josh untrustworthy or anything, but if I created a service like this I would be bias as fuck also.

So what are we going to do
Over the next few weeks we're going to see the short term and long term effects of CTR manipulation, we're also going to compare it to traditional link building and "normal" SEO.

On top of that we're going to have a control test, a web property that will have nothing done to it so we can confirm that the effects of both of these techniques are the reason for any success that we see.

How exactly am I going to do this
Building this out with being as fair as possible will not be as simple as you think.

Building 3 separate websites with 0 authority is time consuming, slow and there are too many variables. So we're going to be building 3 parasite pages on the same platform.

I will focus on the following:
  • Everything will be the same, a 1500-2000 word article on the keyword.
  • Use of partial match/LSI keywords will be used in the content.
  • Headers/titles/meta info will be the same
  • Keyword density will be the same
  • They will contain 3 OBL's to relevant authority sites
  • They will be left to age for 2 weeks before we being the CTR/link building
  • The keyword they all target will be the same
I can't see a fairer way to do this.

There will be 3 properties built:
  • A control that will have nothing done to it, no links, no CTR.
  • A property for CTR manipulation only
  • A property for link building only
The money spent on each strategy will be the same, $47 over a month.

This is the lowest SERPClix package

I will not be sharing URL's until the experiment is over and if possible I will be tracking analytics (to actually see the clicks provided) to see if Josh does anything stupid and provides extra clicks to make sure his service gets good results. I should only expect 107 clicks according to the SERPClix website.

The service I use will be a SEO package, I've not looked for one which matches the budget and requirements yet.

How are you measuring results
When I have built all the properties I will use SERPBook to share the results live, so you can check in and see the exact results you see whenever you want to see them. I will be editing this post and keeping it up to date over time.

What do you think, is this a fair test, what can be improved?

What do you think we will see?
Click to expand...
HEY! You know we can`t trust this test either, because Google ranks all your websites on first place, regardless of what you do :P You could rank a redirect of a guestbook entry on first place for the word "a" :P

Now to get serious for half a second, THANK GOD someone is doing this, I was too close to buying the software, but soo many pages without a single honest positive review got me to pause my urges for a minute :)
 
bartosimpsonio said:
Exactly what Ste said. Google was a major sponsor of Firefox, billions of U$ invested. Then they suddenly invested billions more into their own browser with its own rendering engine and its own javascript engine. Wow, they reinvented the web browser! Why? For free? They like programming so much they went and threw billions of U$ out the window? Nope.

After Chrome came out, Google knew what people were doing online - THAT's when the SEO game really changed. Google then knew how much time people spent on sites, their habits, their browsing history and THAT went into the ranking factors. Most link spam and PBN's are given away by folks using Chrome and Gmail and so on.

I have found so many interesting "features" while looking at the internals of Chromium. Plus : Chrome has proprietary encrypted modules in it not present in Chromium. What are they? What do they do?

When you start Chromium and look at the process list, you can see the full command used to start it, it has a unique ID attached to it. That unique ID is yours forever, when you move your stuff, sync, and so on, you are being tracked like a lab mouse.

Furthermore, when you type into Chrome, they can take your typing timing signature and the URL prediction sends all your addresses to Google. And if you're crazy enough to sync your bookmarks and your phone, then they have all your contacts, routes, maps, typing pattern, use habits and everything else about you.

You still using Gmail and Chrome?
Click to expand...

what i hate is situations like when you have some rash on your groin so you gonna make a picture with your android so you see better how it looks, then you delete the picture but pooop its autosynced and on the internet already :) borrow phone to someone and he might see HA
 
aidenhera said:
what i hate is situations like when you have some rash on your groin so you gonna make a picture with your android so you see better how it looks, then you delete the picture but pooop its autosynced and on the internet already :) borrow phone to someone and he might see HA
Click to expand...

How about them automatically "backing up" all your contacts and phone numbers the first time you use a android device. They're collecting everyone's contact lists automatically as soon as you buy a phone.

AryabhattZero said:
Cheers! I also use Firefox (dev). So if you don't use gmail what do you use? Outlook?
Click to expand...

Every hosting package comes with free emails. Even cheap shared hosting packages often give you unlimited emails. Why use a "free" email at all?

JimR said:
Is Firefox not doing the same thing then? And does this mean Google doesn't get a lot of metrics when you search on Google using Firefox or does the Javascript still track just about everything?
Click to expand...

Google likely thought of adding their special codes into Firefox, but Mozilla is a open institution and their own developers would start asking questions, whereas Google's developers are bound by NDA's. The public part of Chrome is not all of Chrome, there is proprietary code in there that nobody knows what it does.

Firefox OTOH is 100% open source, the code you compile is exactly what's on the source code repository. At least it's supposed to be and I guess there are lots of security pros checking on that.

Having said that, Firefox DOES send a lot of telemetry to Google out of the box. The "malware sites" feature, for instance, checks sites against a google.com hosted webservice. Also url suggestion and search suggestions send your keystrokes to google while typing on the address bar. But hey, they're Mozilla sponsors, they should get some perks in return ;)
 
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Don't waste time and money on this, it doesn't work at all since I tested several manual click service.
Google is smart enough to detect something like this.
 
Same here - tested a service like this earlier and no results. I forgot if it was serpclix or not, but they had some bugs and were finishing the last click with a competitors site on some of the logs. Either way, it did fuck all for rankings. I suppose it could be helpful for very new sites who need to gain traction for their brand terms, but links and onpage are the biggest factors.
 
My guess is CTR manipulation would work in a timely niche where Google doesn't have the luxury of other ranking signals. Things like news events are probably more likely to be affected by CTR and social signals IMO, just because link data is a long-term signal, and news stories have a very short shelf-life.

I still think this is an interesting case study, and hopefully we'll see something definitive. I'd wonder if Google paired CTR with another factor such as social signals or link velocity. Naturally, if your CTR goes up, then social signals and link velocity might increase as well. That also might be a bit to micro for Google to worry about because of the processing cost.

And, before we throw the social signals idea out, Google did Partner with Twitter. They also have stayed pretty quiet about the relationship from what I've seen, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're using social signals in some way. http://searchengineland.com/everything-need-know-google-twitter-partnership-216892
 
I have used Click through services like crowdsearch.me in the past, and I don't really think there's any positive effects.


As far as I believe, the origin of the visitor plays a huge role. Ie; a visitor Google's your site or brand, then clicks on a result, then performs actions on whichever page he or she lands on. Google is able to determine if this visitor is legit or fake based on their search history and other factors. It doesn't seem like the average amount of bots or paid clickers(mechanical Turk etc) doing CTR will really make a difference unless perhaps your site has an event to justify WHY you are suddenly receiving a lot of searches, this could perhaps be due to a post on social media about your site/brand going viral or appearing in a verified news story.

Then again, it is important to remember that even IF there is a surefire way to increase rankings thru CTR manipulation, it could lead to a site owner/webmaster neglecting very real issues that hamper the chance for real conversions such as


•Site speed
•UI/UX
•Customer Journey process

We all know that almost everyone of us here wants to game the system in some way or another, and very often we are blinded by "New ranking Tactics", "Powerful Links gauged by Third party metrics" and other bullshit. Many of us simply refuse to believe that we haven't gotten to where we'd like to be because our websites are lacking in something vital...we think that just because we spent a fair bit of time and money on it, it is as perfect as it gets.
 
kickthat said:
@Ste Fishkin Just going through my watched threads and came across this one. Any results to share from this?
Click to expand...

I very much doubt it. I used it on a variety of keywords and it had zero effect. One of the keywords was that easy it was naturally indexed middle of page two and nothing. The kind of keyword I could have pushed onto page one using 10 / 20 blog comments.
 
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