Search pogosticking is when a searcher bounces back and forth between a search results pages at a search engine for a query and pages listed in those search results.
A search engine could track search pogosticking in data from its log files or a search toolbar, and use it to rerank the pages that show up in a search for that query.
A recent Yahoo patent application is about information a search engine may collect when searchers click on search results. It suggests that information could be used with a ranking system like the one Yahoo described in a patent filing on User Sensitive PageRank. I wrote about that in Yahoo Replaces PageRank Assumptions with User Data.
The Yahoo patent filing on search pogosticking is:
Search Pogosticking Benchmarks Invented by Thomas A. Kehl and Jyri M. W. Kidwell Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20080275882 Published November 6, 2008 Filed: May 2, 2007
Abstract
Disclosed are apparatus and methods for quantifying how much searchers select other search results, instead of a particular search result.
In example embodiments, the number of times that other search results are selected before a particular search result is selected (referred to as pre-pogosticking) is tracked, and the number of times that other search results are selected after a particular search result is selected (referred to as post-pogosticking) is also tracked.
This search pogosticking information may be used to improve search result ranking as produced by a search algorithm or to provide metrics to potential or current buyers of particular search terms.
Some of that collected information might be:
- The specific search results, such as the web sites
- The presentation order for the search results
- Whether each search result is a sponsored or algorithmic search result
- The owner of each search result
- Whether each search result is selected by the user
- The current time of each search result selection, or an indication as to the order of search result selection.
Using Search Pogosticking for Rankings or Providing Previews?
In 2004, Ask Jeeves introduced “binoculars” to let people preview a site and avoid search pogosticking:
Ask Jeeves’ also announced today the beta launch of Binoculars, a patent-pending site preview tool. The Binoculars tool enables users to quickly and easily preview their search results before clicking-through to visit the end pages themselves.
According to an independent user study conducted by VeriTest, the testing division of Lionbridge, binoculars reduced the number of clicks required to find relevant results by 50-70% per search.
Unfortunately, the preview page that Ask.com shows in search results appears to be the home page for the domain that a page may be upon rather than a preview of pages other than home pages listed in search results.
It would be great to be able to see an actual preview of a page before clicking upon it, but it would also probably be pretty computationally expensive to provide timely previews of pages for a large number of web sites.
Conclusion
While I was reading this patent filing, I thought of how I tend to search and look at search results pages. I often right-click on links to pages in search results that look interesting and open those pages in new tabs, and then look through them. I’m not sure how many others do the same thing, but I couldn’t call what I do search pogosticking.
One takeaway from this patent filing that I see is that it can be helpful if the page title and the meta description created for a page are good descriptions of the content that searchers will see when they click through a search result listing to the page.
Page titles and meta descriptions should engage people who see them and persuade them to visit a page, but they should also help people feel confident about what they will discover when they visit the page itself. Absent actual previews of pages, search pogosticking will likely continue to happen.
If tracking information about search pogosticking activity can help a search engine provide more relevant search results, then it just might be a process used by a search engine.