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What is click distance?
Click distance is the number of clicks it takes
to get to a web page from the home page of your web
site. If you need 5 clicks from your home page to
go to page A and 2 clicks from you home page to get
to page B then page B has a smaller click distance
than page A.
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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