Direct Traffic: Is It A Google Ranking Factor? - Search Engine Journal

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Does Google factor direct website visits into your search rankings?

To be clear, direct traffic is where a person (or bot – we’ll get to that later) navigates directly to your website’s URL versus through another channel, such as a search engine or social media platform.

They already know you, and that tells Google great things about your authority and popularity — or so the theory goes.

Let’s see what the experts have to say about this one.

The Claim: Direct Traffic As A Ranking Factor

The idea here is that a direct website visit is an endorsement of your webpage, much in the same way as a link.

Direct traffic is any site visit without an http_referrer (for one reason or another).

For direct traffic to count as a ranking factor, Google would need to somehow measure those direct visits to your site using one of its tools.

Considering it has Chrome, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, its DNS service, Google Fiber, and more at its disposal, there’s no shortage of possibilities as to where this click data could come from.

The Evidence For Direct Traffic As A Ranking Factor

A Backlinko article dated Jan 22, 2020, states, “It’s confirmed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine how many people visit site (and how often).”

Following that...



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