What it is
During the US antitrust trial, Google’s Pandu Nayak confirmed under oath that Navboost is one of Google’s important ranking signals. Navboost re-ranks results using aggregated click behaviour, drawing on a rolling window of roughly 13 months of data.
Trial exhibits went further. Internal Google communications described Navboost as more powerful on click and precision metrics than much of the rest of ranking put together, and noted that engineers outside the team were uncomfortable with how much influence it held.
How much weight to give it
The strongest class of evidence in SEO. It’s a Google executive, under oath, describing Google’s own systems, corroborated by internal documents entered as exhibits. Nothing an outside tester produces can match that standing.
What it doesn’t prove
Testimony given in court is careful and general. It doesn’t tell you the current weighting, how aggregation works in practice, or how the system treats low-volume queries. It also describes a state of affairs at the time, and Google’s systems move.
What to do about it
Very little that’s new. If aggregated satisfaction feeds ranking, the winning move is a result people choose and stay on, which is what the guidance already asked for. Trying to manufacture clicks runs into the fraud detection the leaked documentation also describes.