Pogo-sticking happens when someone clicks a search result, doesn't find what they need almost immediately, and bounces straight back to the results page to try a different one, often within seconds. The name comes from the up-and-down motion: into a result, back out, into the next one.
It's distinct from a normal bounce in an important way: a bounce alone doesn't tell you whether the visitor was satisfied or not, but pogo-sticking specifically captures dissatisfaction, since the visitor's next move is straight back to searching rather than leaving the search journey altogether. Google has never confirmed exactly how directly it uses this pattern in ranking, but the behavior itself is a strong, independently useful signal regardless: a page that gets clicked often and returned from quickly usually means the title and snippet oversold what the content actually delivers, or the content itself buries the answer below something the visitor has to dig through to find. Pages showing a pattern like this are worth auditing against exactly what the ranking query implies the visitor wanted, and whether the page actually delivers that clearly near the top.
