Old checklists credited RankBrain with watching how searchers behave; Google describes it as a system that relates words to concepts (Ranking Systems). Behavior does matter, though. Google's How Search Works site states: "We also use aggregated and anonymized interaction data to assess whether search results are relevant to queries." Two events added detail, with limits worth stating precisely:
The US v. Google antitrust trial. Google's Pandu Nayak testified in 2023, as reported by Search Engine Land, that Navboost, dating back "at least to 2005", is "one of the important signals" and memorizes clicks on queries from the past 13 months. It cannot help pages that have no clicks.
The 2024 API documentation leak. Internal Content Warehouse API documentation published on GitHub 29 in March 2024 surfaced in May. It names 14,014 attributes, including goodClicks, badClicks, lastLongestClicks and chromeInTotal. It "did not specify how any of the ranking features are weighted", nor which are used today; Google warned against assumptions "based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information."
| Signal | Status | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Aggregated click and interaction data | Confirmed | Google's How Search Works |
| Navboost click memory | Confirmed under oath | Nayak testimony, 2023 |
| Personalization by search history | Confirmed | Google's How Search Works |
| Long versus short clicks, pogo-sticking | Unconfirmed weight | Leaked attribute names only |
| Chrome 1 browsing data in ranking | Unconfirmed | Leaked attribute name only |
| Analytics bounce rate, bookmarks | Unconfirmed | No Google documentation |