Behavioral factors: How to distinguish a robot from a person?

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    The competition between machine and man is an invisible struggle that has been unfolding on the Internet since its inception. The confrontation between SEO technologies and search engines is as old as the world, but completely unknown to a wide audience. This text is an attempt to shed light on what actually happened and is happening before our eyes. And since this is a company’s blog, you will also learn from this text how the SERPClick service , based on the behavior of live users, can affect what we search and find on the Internet every day.



    How did it start?
    It all started with the fact that they don’t like “seoshniks”. Ugly sites where you can’t find what you came for, content in the style of “come to the bar, restaurant, cinema, concerts, entertainment clubs in Moscow, buy cheaply order now”. In a word, everything connected with the so-called “optimization” was often neither aimed at the person, nor even at least somewhat friendly towards him. Therefore, of course, nobody likes seoshnikov.

    However, let's face it: in this situation, the search engines themselves were to blame. Their algorithm, which showed the user in the search results sites, skipped such sites and even considered them “good” because they were optimized ... for a search robot. Such a robot will run around the site - it will see that the keys correspond to the request, and index such a site as “good”, and then it will be shown to everyone in the search results, although it can be painful to look at it.

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    Where does it fit? Nowhere.
    Search engines themselves realized that they were "worthless" and began to improve their ranking algorithms, complicating them and bringing them closer to real conditions. The confrontation between the SEOs - search engines began. That is, as soon as the search engines found a “vulnerability” in the search engine system and were able to “cram” something there like a squirrel in the hollow of nuts, only to let the search engine again recognize their site “good”, they immediately did it. In response, search engines complicated their ranking algorithms, nullifying the previous efforts of the SEOs, and then the cycle was repeated, already at a new level.

    Sometimes it was funny. For example, Google likes to call its updated algorithms beautifully - this is how it appeared, for example, from the latter - Panda (2011) and Penguin (2012). Seoshniki who, prior to these updates, carefully purchased links on other sites (and this is not cheap pleasure and also extremely painstaking), suddenly turned out to be literally pushed out of the galaxy with their sites. They had to urgently remove links that they so diligently, as soon as the spider can weave its web, placed on carefully selected external sites. And all because before Google considered all the links leading to your site - an indicator of quality.

    It is easy to guess that for every update there is a new way to try to obsessively explain to the search engine that your site is good. However, now it is becoming more and more difficult. The whole impressive arsenal that SEO specialists had before literally melts before our eyes.

    The essence of updates comes down to the fact that search engines are pushing webmasters and site owners to one simple thought: you don’t have to “optimize” anything too hard. All you need from optimization is to intelligently tell about your site, using, of course, a set of keywords - but without fanaticism. And then - let people come and vote for your site.

    Vote for our site - rejoiced seoshniki? Bang bang! There are many services like cheat. You probably also saw these strange vkontaktnye and Facebook groups with a thousand and a half likes, in which there is no life, no comments - no one. But there are likes.

    No, of course, it’s impossible - the search engines scratched their noses and came up with something that would not be so easy to “fake”. So the concept of user behavior (behavioral factors) was introduced, which, in principle, had been talked about before, but it became the “term of the year” in 2013 and will not lose its relevance, and in 2014 as well.

    Behavioral factors
    Here we have to interrupt our entertaining and accessible to any reader story and make a small reservation. The fact is that analytics is always screwed to any decent site: Yandex Metric / Liveinternet / GoogleAnalytics / some other kind of custom analytics.

    This is a system that records who and where came from the site, how long it was there, how many pages it looked, what it did. Don’t worry, there is no your data there, it has nothing to do with our constant fears about surveillance (as if someone needs us!). All data is anonymized, but they give a good idea of ​​whether anyone comes to this site at all and is interested in at least something.

    To fake this data will not work. In order for the system to register that someone has come to the site, it is necessary that someone has come to the site. In fairness, at one time, they faked it - using special scripts that ran through the pages of the site and “pretended” that they were an interested user. Search engines quickly came up with an algorithm to distinguish a script from a person and cut out bots.

    Well, since behavioral factors turned out to be the “last bastion”, where the hands of the seoshniks simply cannot get, the search engines have identified these factors as one of the most important ones that they take into account when ranking the site. What does it mean? For users, this means that it's time to start rejoicing. Finally, it seems that in the search, the top will show sites that live people use, which means sites that have convenient content, navigation, beautiful and well-written texts and everything is clear, beautiful and practical.

    We can observe the results of this initiative now - many companies maintain corporate blogs and try to share something interesting and well-written, sites are being modified, design and user qualities are improving. No luck. But those who want to be the best follow this.

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    What's next?
    Then everything is simple. If you already have a company website, then you can stay in the top only if you “constantly improve it” - as search engines recommend. If you want to create a new site, then only users can let the search engine know if your site is useful - they will come, open, look, click.

    Two things haunt webmasters now: the unexplained “constantly improve” and - how now to launch a new site? After all, it turns out a vicious circle: there are no users - there are no positive behavioral statistics, and there are no behavioral statistics - there are no users. And the “better” seashochny automation now, as we understand it, in this case will not help much.

    In order for the site to speak with the search engine in the “common language” as soon as possible, a service appearedSERPClick . This service has nothing to do with the heavy legacy of an unattractive SEO past: firstly, the service meets the latest requirements of search engines, and secondly, the service cannot be used if the site is written in an optimized language, looks bad and does not attract users with either look or content.

    SERPClick is a professional tool for really good sites, which allows you to simulate the required minimum set of “correct” behavioral patterns, which are then read by search engines and affect the ranking. Live users come to the site who vote with their “click”, the site is ranked higher in the SERP, more users see it, which means they also come. Given the latest modern trends, this is perhaps the most important way to maintain a position for “old” sites and more quickly and “humane” promotion to the top for new ones.

    Since other users will surely come to the site after the “specially trained” users, their behavior will also affect the ranking of the site. That is why SERPClickit will not help to bring to the top useless and condo-optimized or some kind of "wrecking" dual content site. This professional tool is suitable only for good and useful sites, which means that the Internet becomes a more friendly place for users, where information of interest can be found quickly and on business.

    In conclusion, we can add that if SEO or optimization has a future, then this is the future of the creators of an interesting and meaningful Internet, and here SERPClick goes hand in hand with search engine initiatives in this direction.

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