Is it true that viral traffic can boost a domain literally within a couple of days?

[bettinginsider]

Here’s the situation: I’ve heard that some specialists drive high-quality third-party traffic to their SEO sites specifically when Google’s crawler visits. The idea is that the crawler “sees” a large number of users online, interprets this as a positive signal, and increases the site’s trust. Supposedly, if you do this two or three times, a site can jump from around the top 50 into the top 5.
Is this true or not? Please share your observations. Thanks in advance.

[universal4]

There might be a number of opinions on this but to move it to the top 5, I think there are many other factors needed beyond the boosted traffic hit.

Rick
Universal4

[cassy25k]

if flipping rankings was as simple as faking traffic for a few hours, the entire search engine would be worthless within weeks.

[fonzi1022]

This may have worked 10+ years ago but I doubt it works in todays world.

[invinciblepoker]

only way it helps is in that it can get you seen by the linkerati, who in turn may link to you, which can feed your SEO if the link is deece, I suppose

[golfbettingsystem]

it's an interesting concept. Traffic to our site fluctuates a lot based on the calendar, with traffic around the golf Majors far exceeding a normal week and - without having specifically measured it - I'd say I've noticed that some evergreen pages may have improved a little when traffic was at its strongest, as well as the position on some more generic terms improving too. Now that may be temporary and related to the factors you describe in some way, or just part of the normal wax-and-wane of search results, impossible to tell really.

Whether you could 'fake' the traffic to game the system though and get a sustained improvement remains to be seen.

[LinkWizard]

Probably not. In the way it’s described, it sounds like an SEO myth or a major oversimplification.
Behavioral signals may theoretically be taken into account by search engines, but that doesn’t mean you can drive traffic once, right when the bot visits, and get a ranking boost. Googlebot doesn’t view a site like a real user and doesn’t see a “crowd of visitors” in real time.
If the traffic is unnatural or incentivized, there is usually little benefit, and there are risks.
If someone saw growth after doing this, I would rather assume it coincided with other factors: an update, reindexing, improved content, links, or the site’s technical condition.

[GlobalPokerSites]

Google's SEO rankings are getting more and more sophisticated and will only improve from here. I doubt you're able to see any sort of real boost in rankings without consistent traffic and authentic content.

[Ryan Faucher]

I completely agree with the other users here. Google's algorithm considers many more factors than just traffic spikes. If you think about it, Chrome is one of the most popular web browsers and they can certainly gain user habits and behaviors that indicate how helpful a website is. Things like engagement (how many clicks on buttons, navigating to other pages, time on site, etc.) and of course quality back links to a site. Sure people can manipulate rankings with shady tactics and AI content but those sites always crash weeks or months later. Not a good tactic if you're trying to build a brand.