In the SEO industry, SEO specialist or webmasters can use different methods to improve the ranking for their websites and crowd searching is definitely one of them. In general, crowd searching is described as a pay service that uses a software to program and imitates real users to search the target keywords in the search engine.
The software will use proxies to give Google or other search engines the impression that there are hundreds or even thousands of people online searching for the keywords in the search engines, clicking on the link in the Search engine Results Page (SERPS) and have spent a considerable time browsing the webpage. In theory, crowd searching can help the site owner to improve their CTR (click-through-rate) and reduce the bounce rate all at the same time, which in return boost the site’s SERP rankings.
While many have asked if using crowd searching for their SEO campaign is reliable and effective in getting their rankings up, most will agreed that this method does work but provided if they have to do it the correct way and it is also proven that search engines like Google or Yahoo do not penalize the target site and considered it as black hat tactic. And those who have tried this method do agree that the rankings might drop to the original position the moment they have stopped using crowd searching.
The common traits of using crowd searching method are shown as below;
- The page rankings of the target website have a sudden increase in traffic.
- This will lead to the increase in Click Through Rate (CTR) which combined with the low bounce rate to improve the rankings of the website.
- Most of the time, it will only boost the ranking temporarily
Site owners who have use crowd searching are usually meant for new websites or websites who are underperforming. Those sites who have a large social followers and readership will not need to use the crowd searching method as they normally have a large traffic volume, which is organic and can get a strong page ranking easily just by sharing their content with their readership in the search engine which the readers will boost the ranking further by engaging, sharing and linking the content to their friends or relative online.
While some may consider crowd searching is a “hit and run” tactic to boost the page ranking in a relatively short time, most of the site owners or webmasters will agree on a fact that this method is effective and can help them to increase their SEO ranking among with other SEO white hat tactics in the long term.
