Thread by @jeffrey_coyle

Click Models - What are they and why should you know about them as an SEO? Think about Clicks, Attention, and Satisfaction. I hope you'll get #satisfaction from this 🧵, too. (1/22) #EverythingSEO #SEO #GoogleSearch @MarketMuseCo

Click models are predictive probabilistic data models of search user behavior that aim to predict future user patterns by analyzing historical data. (2/20) #usability #behavior #SEO #SERPs @MarketMuseCo #DataScience #EverythingSEO

Basic Click Models for SERPs aim to understand the examination process of each link presented and understand the biases of other elements on the page like position, ads, and other features. (3/22) @MarketMuseCo #SEO #EverythingSEO #SERPs

Here's a basic overview from Chao Wang at Baidu - sciencedirect.com/science/articl…! - #ClickModels (4/22)

The goal of modern search engineers is to describe click models in a portable, unified way to then be able to relate them to each other and use them in ensemble approaches. (5/22) @MarketMuseCo #SEO @BaiduResearch

Here's an ensemble approach example from the genius minds of Danial Bakhtiarvand and Saeed Farzi - ije.ir/article_108456… (6/22)

More from Farzi cause he's awesome: Check out the query auto-completion and suggestion review if you need a detour. (7/22) scholar.google.com/citations?user…

Why does this matter for SEOs? Understanding that click models exist and how they work relates to Information Retrieval and how systems are designed. Click models improve search quality by correctly interpreting user clicks. (8/22) #SEO #EverythingSEO @MarketMuseCo #IR #AI

Here's the most recent QRG from @Google (9/22) static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelin… @Google #SEO #EverythingSEO @MarketMuseCo

How does this relate to @Google ? - Here's one of the best tutorials about how Click Models can be applied to Google Search by Chuklin, Markov, and de Rijke. (Google Switzerland - 2016) (10/22) @MarketMuseCo #EverythingSEO

staff.fnwi.uva.nl/m.derijke/wp-c…

Now, let's look at later work on the CAS model. Clicks, Attention, and Satisfaction. (11/22) #SEO #EverythingSEO @MarketMuseCo #ContentQuality Quality. Satisfaction.

static.googleusercontent.com/media/research…

Basic click models had issues and an important challenge arising from modern #SERP layouts because the user examines it in a very complex way, not top to bottom. (12/22) @MarketMuseCo #SearchEngineDesign

Early evaluation models had issues because they had trouble accounting for the cases where a user gained value and experienced information gain directly from the SERP like a currency conversion query, which yields nearly zero clicks and has nearly 100% satisfaction. (13/22) #SEO

Other activities like abandonment and mouse movements were also not included in early models. (14/22) #SEO #EverythingSEO #SERP #SearchEngines @MarketMuseCo @MktgAi

User perceived rank is different than actual organic rank and those need to be calculated differently as well. If you haven't already realized your rank tracking is not enough, stay tuned. (15/22) #EverythingSEO #SEO @MarketMuseCo

Attention (examination) models assess time spent on the SERP, mouse patterns, geometry, CSS/SERP Feature structures, real rank (think VED, @VorticonCmdr), and perceived rank are needed. (16/22) #SEO #EverythingSEO @MarketMuseCo #SERP

Satisfaction models are how we validate behavior against possible satisfaction. At a minimum, QRG is validation for satisfaction models. This is the piece the #SEO world misses. (17/22) #EverythingSEO #SERP @MarketMuseCo

"This assumption is supported by data that we collected from raters." (18/22) @Google @MarketMuseCo #SEO #EverythingSEO

static.googleusercontent.com/media/research…

"move away from ten blue links approach & adopt an evaluation metric that uses rich features & relevance signals beyond traditional document relevance." For those that debate this, note that by this, there was a '10 blue links approach' and that isn't debatable. (19/22) #SEO

What else do Click Models do? User simulation. Click models decompose the click probability into the properties of a document like attention, attractiveness, and satisfaction parameters. They also identify impact of document rank, surrounding documents & features. (20/22) #SEO

What else do Click Models do? User interaction analysis. With parameters of a click model, we can QUANTIFY how document placement & structure changes consumption of SERP & introduce recommendations ex. "News packs only impact their neighbors when placed at the top" (21/22) #SEO

Importantly, click models enable the inference of document relevance. If click model-driven relevance is used as a learning feature in an ML-based ranking system, it significantly improves the end result. (22/22) @MarketMuseCo #EverythingSEO #SEO #ContentQuality

Bonus round: This means that it is a powerful signal of document quality. #SEO #EverythingSEO @MarketMuseCo

That's why you need to care about click models. Want to know more? Buy this book. g.co/kgs/7KyhgM #SEO

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Hope this made your day a little brighter, @darth_na ;)

... @noahlearner thought you'd dig this one.