Site popularity: What every Webmaster needs to know
Don't miss DirectHit -- The ins and outs of click popularity and stickiness
Why should I care about DirectHit and other click popularity technologies?
Any Webmaster trying to achieve top search engine placement needs to be familiar with DirectHit and other click-tracking technologies. Lycos, Hotbot, MSN, and other search engines currently use DirectHit's site ranking system, which is based on the concepts of “click popularity” and “stickiness,”. DirectHit is currently owned and incorporated into Ask Jeeves and Teoma.
What are click popularity and stickiness?
With click popularity and stickiness DirectHit claims to allow users, rather than search engines or directory editors, to organize search results.
- Click popularity is a measure of the number of clicks received by each site in a search engine's results page.
Example: Let's say 20 users search for "puppy food." If, after scanning the first 10 results, all the users click on the Smith Brothers Dog Food site, a click-tracking technology assumes Smith Brothers' site is more relevant than the other sites in the top 10. Next time someone searches for puppy food, Smith Brothers' site will have a higher ranking in the results.
- Stickiness is a measure of the amount of time a user spends at a site. It's calculated according to the time that elapses between each of the user's clicks on the search engine's results page.
Example: Let's say you search for "puppy food." You get a page with 10 sites to visit. You click on the first one and wander off for 20 minutes. Then you come back to the results page and click on the next site. It turns out to be irrelevant, so you go on to the third in about 20 seconds. Click-tracking technologies records the time between your clicks and uses it to determine each site's relevance. The longer the visit, the better for the ranking.
What can I do to score higher on DirectHit?
Since click popularity is based on factors outside a Webmaster's control, there's no magic formula to improve your site's placement. Optimizing your Meta tags and increasing keyword density won't change where you stand with click-tracking systems. However, there are a few things you can do to encourage users to visit your site more often and stay longer.
Avoid spam
There's been much discussion about ways to spam DirectHit. Some computer gurus have created programs that can search for a certain keyword, find a company's site and click on it. After remaining on the site for a specified amount of time, the program will go back and repeat the process.
DirectHit has pledged to penalize companies caught participating in this type of activity. The giveaway is the IP number, which can be used to identify the spammer. However, with dial-up services a new IP number is created every time the computer dials in. This is also true of most types of DSL and cable services that don't have a static IP number assigned to them. If a spammer is connecting to the Internet in one of these ways, DirectHit can't track him.
DirectHit technology:
- Measures click popularity and stickiness
- Gives clicks for low-scoring sites more weight
- Allows users, not software or editors, to rank sites
 
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