Click Popularity, Temporal & Link Popularity

Click Popularity

This is a measure of the appeal of the site title and description to surfers. Search engines know the probability that any given rank will be clicked on. If you are clicked more often than expected, your rank improves. If you are clicked less often than expected your rank drops. This is only used by search engines which pass outgoing referrals through a redirect script. Classic Direct Hit technology.

Temporal

A form of click popularity, this is a measure of the time surfers spend on your site after clicking. Search engines know the probability that a surfer will "back out" of a site and how long that should take. If that percentage is more than expected, or if it happens quicker than expected, that site is reduced in rank. If surfers back out less often, or if they stay longer, that site's rank increases. It also increases rank if surfers never return to the search engine. The assumption is that they found what they wanted. This is used only by search engines which pass outgoing referrals through a redirect script. Classic Direct Hit technology.

Link Popularity

Link Popularity is a method of ranking a website based on sophisticated analysis of the links between sites. Once a simple count of all the links to a website, today link popularity is a sophisticated analysis that weights some links more than others. Link Popularity considers inbound links, outbound links, sites which link to you and the content of linked text. Google has the most sophisticated algorithm but it is also a factor for AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, Webcrawler and HotBot.