Björn Hansson Precis som i framtiden

25% fler klick med rätt domän?

Att domännamnet kan påverka CTR i sökmotorer är nog ingen större nyhet för de flesta (förutom för Microsoft?). Men exakt hur mycket skillnad det kan göra är nu seriöst testat av några snubbar på Microsoft. Ett utdrag från den publicerade studien på stanford.edu:

It should not be surprising that users have learned to trust some domains over others. Indeed, past work such as TrustRank measures user trust at a domain level [10]. A recent eye-tracking study also confirms that users pay attention to the displayed URL1. One could argue that search engines already know this and exploit it by using the PageRank of a domain in their scoring functions so as to boost
documents from domains of high reputation. What is surprising is that users click on results from reputable domains even when more relevant search results are available.

.........

Users seem to have learned the landscape of the internet and their click behavior has thus become more predictable over time. Next, we run a blind domain test, akin to a Pepsi/Coke taste test, to determine whether domains can shift a user’s opinion of which page is more relevant. We find that domains can actually flip a user’s preference about 25% of the time. Finally, we demonstrate the existence of systematic domain preferences, even after factoring out confounding issues such as position bias and relevance, two factors that have been used extensively in past work to explain user behavior. The existence of domain bias has numerous consequences including, for example, the importance of discounting click activity from reputable domains.

25% större anledning att spendera lite mer pengar på rätt domän kanske? 😉