The Facts About Google Click Signals, Rankings, And SEO

Clicks as a ranking-related signal have been a subject of debate for over twenty years, although nowadays most SEOs understand that clicks are not a direct ranking factor. The simple truth about clicks is that they are raw data and, surprisingly, processed with some similarity to human rater scores.

Clicks Are A Raw Signal

The DOJ Antitrust memorandum opinion from September 2025 mentions clicks as a “raw signal” that Google uses. It also categorizes content and search queries as raw signals. This is important because a raw signal is the lowest-level data point which is processed into higher level ranking signals or used for training a model like RankEmbed and its successor, RankEmbedBERT.

Those are considered raw signals because they are:

• Directly observed
• But not yet interpreted or used for training data

The DOJ document quotes professor James Allan, who gave expert testimony on behalf of Google:

“Signals range in complexity. There are “raw” signals, like the number of clicks, the content of a web page, and the terms within a query.

…These signals can be created with simple methods, such as counting occurrences (e.g., how many times a web page was clicked in response to a particular query). Id.
at 2859:3–2860:21 (Allan) (discussing Navboost signal) “

He then contrasts the raw signals with how they are processed:

“At the other end of the spectrum are innovative deep-learning models, which are machine-learning models that discern complex patterns in large datasets.

Deep models find and exploit patterns in vast data sets. They add unique capabilities at high cost.”

Professor Allan explains that “top-level signals” are used to produce the “final” scores for a web page, including popularity and quality.

Raw Signals Are Data To Be Further Processed

Navboost is mentioned several times in the September 2025 antitrust document as popularity data. It’s not mentioned in the context of clicks having a ranking effect on individal sites.

It’s referred to as a way to measure popularity and intent:

“…popularity as measured by user intent and feedback systems including Navboost/Glue…”

And elsewhere, in the context of explaining why some of the Navboost data is privileged:

“They are ‘popularity as measured by user intent and feedback systems including Navboost/Glue’…”

In the context of explaining why some of the Navboost data is privileged:

“Under the proposed remedy, Google must make available to Qualified Competitors …the following datasets:

1. User-side Data used to build, create, or operate the GLUE statistical model(s);

2. User-side Data used to train, build, or operate the RankEmbed model(s); and

3. The User-side Data used as training data for GenAI Models used in Search or any GenAI Product that can be used to access Search.

Google uses the first two datasets to build search signals and the third to train and refine the models underlying AI Overviews and (arguably) the Gemini app.”

Clicks, like…