Tech question about how Google site rankings work

[Arch]

I poked around online to see if I could find an answer to this question but soon gave up when I saw how techy it was. I'm very ignorant about this stuff. Maybe some folks here know how it works.

Can a website move higher in the Google search rankings if lots of people visit that site, or even if the same person visits the site over and over from the same computer? This weekend, a friend of mine suggested that this might be possible.

Recently, I visited a page that I did NOT want other people to see because it has information about me and outs me. At first, the page was well buried and would only come up on the tenth or fifteenth page of hits. After I obsessively revisited the page a few times, it suddenly started coming up on the first page of Google hits. Same search terms and everything.

Urkh!

[Sarah Louise]

My "guess" would be that it only moved up on your computer.  I doubt that you could visit it enough times that you could affect its popularity to the overall web.

Easy way to check it out would be go to the library and try looking it up there, or a cyber cafe.  Just don't use your computer to check it.

[Arch]

My "guess" would be that it only moved up on your computer.  I doubt that you could visit it enough times that you could affect its popularity to the overall web.

Seriously, I didn't see how three or four visits could have such a profound effect. I'll do a new search the next time I'm at the library. Then I'll see what other people see. Thanks.