Why is click distance important?

Some search engines (including Google) seem to take click distance into account when calculating the ranking of web pages. The lower the click distance, the more value is given to a web page.

In addition to the click distance, some search engines might also take the directory structure into account.

A web page with the URL www.example.com/page.htm is considered more important than a page with a URL that points to a sub directory: www.example.com/here/there/whereever/page.htm

How can you influence the click distance on your web site?

It's likely that a clean site with less click distance gets better Google rankings than a site with a cluttered navigation.

An easy way to make every page of your web site available with at most two clicks is putting a sitemap link on every web page. Using Google's Sitemaps service doesn't help because it does not change the click distance of your web site. You have to put a normal sitemap on your web site.

If you use a normal sitemap on your web site then you don't have to participate in Google's Sitemaps program because Google will find all of your pages through your regular sitemap.

Are there official documents about click distance?

A MSN Search patent application with the title System and method for ranking search results using click distance contains further information about click distance and its possible effects on web page rankings.

Click distance is another factor that shows how important it is that search engines can find and parse your web pages quickly and easily. To make it as easy as possible for search engines to parse your pages, use our proven top 10 optimization tools for web pages and links.


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