When a user clicks on a ranked website after entering a search term on Google.com, Google measures exactly how long the user stays on the website and how quickly the user switches back to the SERP results to visit another website.
Google sees key figures in various interactive user signals that represent a ranking factor and thus the classification of the relevance of your website in the SERPs for certain search terms. These include above all
- the click-through rate: how many impressions in the search results are required for an average user to click on your snippet link
- the return-to-SERP rate: how quickly a user returns to the search results
- the time spent on the website (video embedding)
- the number of clicks on a website (image galleries)
- the bounce rate (bounce rate)
Therefore, on the one hand, your website should not have any technical flaws that cause a user to quickly abandon the site and return to the SERPs. On the other hand, your website should also satisfy the exact user interest so that the user stays on your website for as long as possible and finds exactly the information they are looking for.
A practical example: Anyone who opens and watches the image video of game retailer Lenz Wild spends at least 1.5 minutes on the website - a positive user signal for Google.
If the user signal is positive, your ranking in the SERPs for the search term is confirmed or even improved. If the user signal is such that a user returns to the SERPs after a few seconds, Google recognizes that your content was not fulfilling for the search term and you may be downranked for this or comparable search results.
For this reason, it is also interesting to design websites without cookies if they can be functionally dispensed with. From our agency experience, we know that only a few customers really professionally evaluate the visitor statistics in Google Analytics and derive change requirements etc. from this. It is therefore better to rely solely on the Search Console to measure online visibility and to do without a cookie banner. If this is implemented too dominantly, it often happens that users leave the page again after a few seconds, which is one of the worst user signals of all.
