A couple weeks ago, we reported that the head of Google Brain said that Google uses click data for rankings. I have the audio recording of him saying it but I assumed either he was mistaken or he was referring to using the data for checking in on their algorithms. But he did say they use it for rankings and did not clarify when he said that.

I did email Google several times asking for a comment over the past couple weeks and did not get a response. So in the hangout yesterday with Google’s John Mueller, I put him on the spot. I asked him:

(Q) To be 100% clear, Google is not using click data, behavioral data, pogosticking, that type of stuff directly in their search ranking algorithm for ranking websites in their search results?

John Mueller of Google responded:

(A) As far as I know, we don’t use that.

The conversation on this started at the 5:16 minute mark into the video. Here is the transcript:

Here is the video embed:

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