Pogo-sticking may also happen when the searcher is simply browsing around; they may not intend to stay long on one particular page. They could be looking for some inspiration, comparing prices, or trying to recall a site they saw the other day.
Search results showing list of articles about "best gifts"
It is irrational to penalize these sites just because the searcher was quickly looking around for something that could catch their attention.
Other reasons
To further illustrate the complexity of scenarios that can lead to pogo-sticking, let’s consider this situation. Let’s say someone told you that you can put WD40 on car door seals in winter to prevent them from freezing. Logically, you’ll want to verify that information. So you Google it.
Google SERP for "does wd40 prevent door seals from freezing"
So… which website offers the best advice here?
Just by reading the descriptions under the blue links, you can see the searcher gets different answers. This may “trigger” pogo-sticking but for different reasons. And sometimes, that could be kind of Google’s fault.
If the searcher clicks the first result, they’ll probably bounce back quite fast because that site is about frozen car locks and not seals. They may come back to the SERP, but that definitely isn’t the content’s fault.
How about result #4? It says that you can use WD40 to prevent seals from freezing. However, you shouldn’t do it too often. After seeing this, the searcher may come back to the SERP and try another result to verify that information. Again, this is pogo-sticking, but penalizing anybody here is unfair.
And if the searcher clicks #6 first? Maybe that’s because they first read the snippet in result #5. If they get to number #6, they’ll get the answer quite fast. Don’t put WD40 on car door seals (which is probably the correct answer here). Then, they may return to the SERP to find another site with this kind of information to double-check, or they may perform a new search.
Is pogo-sticking a ranking factor?
Now for the big question: Is pogo-sticking a ranking factor? Tl;dr: Pogo-sticking is almost certainly not a ranking factor. A few years back, John Mueller confirmed that in a Google Webmaster Central hangout, saying:
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We try not to use signals like that when it comes to search. So that’s something where there are lots of reasons why users might go back and forth, or look at different things in the search results, or stay just briefly on a page and move back again. I think that’s really hard to refine and say ‘well, we could turn this into a ranking factor.’
So I would not worry about things like that. When we look at our algorithms overall, when we review which algorithm changes that we want to launch, we do look into how users react to these changes. But that’s something we look at across millions of different queries, and millions of different pages, and kind of see in general is this algorithm going the right way or is this algorithm going in the right way.
But for individual pages, I don’t think that’s something worth focusing on at all.
Should you worry about pogo-sticking?
From an SEO perspective: not necessarily. Since there can be many reasons why searchers may jump between sites, Google almost certainly doesn’t treat pogo-sticking as a ranking factor. So don’t worry about it specifically.
From a business perspective: It may be something to look into. Ranking factors or not, you probably want your readers to stick around longer than a few seconds and engage with what you offer.