Skip to main content
Meta Stack Exchange

Return to Answer

Ease of reading edit. Made punctuation regular.
Source Link
bad_coder
bad_coder
  • 28k
  • 8
  • 51
  • 133

The way search engines infer the "satisfaction" with their service is by measuring the time a user spends with a link they clicked. If the user comes back in less than 5 seconds (or another arbitrary cutoff, there is probably research on that) to click on the next search result or to start a new query, he counts as "unsatisfied".

Now this is not a perfect metric, but it's a part of how Google and Bing manage to show you stuff which not just has a high page rank, but is also relevant to your query. It's technically called dwell time and described in papers such as this one.

I realize that Stack Exchange is probably not tracking this metric yet. But if it is, that number could certainly be included in the formula. And if not, it might have internal uses beside profile decoration, which could make it worthwhile to track.

The way search engines infer the "satisfaction" with their service is by measuring the time a user spends with a link they clicked. If the user comes back in less than 5 seconds (or another arbitrary cutoff, there is probably research on that) to click on the next search result or to start a new query, he counts as "unsatisfied".

Now this is not a perfect metric, but it's a part of how Google and Bing manage to show you stuff which not just has a high page rank, but is also relevant to your query. It's technically called dwell time and described in papers such as this one

I realize that Stack Exchange is probably not tracking this metric yet. But if it is, that number could certainly be included in the formula. And if not, it might have internal uses beside profile decoration, which could make it worthwhile to track.

The way search engines infer the "satisfaction" with their service is by measuring the time a user spends with a link they clicked. If the user comes back in less than 5 seconds (or another arbitrary cutoff, there is probably research on that) to click on the next search result or to start a new query, he counts as "unsatisfied".

Now this is not a perfect metric, but it's a part of how Google and Bing manage to show you stuff which not just has a high page rank, but is also relevant to your query. It's technically called dwell time and described in papers such as this one.

I realize that Stack Exchange is probably not tracking this metric yet. But if it is, that number could certainly be included in the formula. And if not, it might have internal uses beside profile decoration, which could make it worthwhile to track.

Source Link
rumtscho
rumtscho
  • 3.2k
  • 18
  • 27

The way search engines infer the "satisfaction" with their service is by measuring the time a user spends with a link they clicked. If the user comes back in less than 5 seconds (or another arbitrary cutoff, there is probably research on that) to click on the next search result or to start a new query, he counts as "unsatisfied".

Now this is not a perfect metric, but it's a part of how Google and Bing manage to show you stuff which not just has a high page rank, but is also relevant to your query. It's technically called dwell time and described in papers such as this one

I realize that Stack Exchange is probably not tracking this metric yet. But if it is, that number could certainly be included in the formula. And if not, it might have internal uses beside profile decoration, which could make it worthwhile to track.