What correlates with ranking
on Google Italy?

An original correlational study on 6,824 unique pages found in the top ten Google Italy results for 841 Italian queries across five market niches.

6.824unique URLs

7.404URL-keyword-position observations

841Italian queries

57technical and on-page signals

Key findings

Keyword in the title shows the strongest measured correlation with better position among the 57 signals.
URL, H1 and meta description also show statistically significant associations with better ranking.
Core Web Vitals do not significantly distinguish positions within this top-10 sample.
Page structure matters more than raw word count in this dataset.

Negative r values indicate association with better SERP positions because position 1 is lower numerically than position 10.

Primary sources

The complete paper is archived on Zenodo. The editorial article on Perseo contains the expanded interpretation, charts and methodological notes.