Experiment: Do User Statistics affect SE Rankings?? - Help and Learn

-Be part of a SEO industry experiment -

Do user statistics (i.e. bouce rate, average time at site, pages visited, etc.) affect search engine results in the major search engines??​

Help by following these instructions, and after you do, leave a post here and I will send you the report with the results from this study.

First, follow these steps:
1.) Visit Google and search for the phrase: Rapid Prototyping
2.) Find and navigate to the page from Google with the url: metrorp(dot)com (is currently result #11)
3.) Stay on the home page for over 1 minute, then click to an interior page.
4.) Stay on this interior page for more than 1 minute, then click to another interior page.
5.) Stay on this page for more than 1 minute, then you can exit out, or feel free to search and browse longer around the site.

Then, leave a post in this thread stating you have completed these steps, then I will send you a report with the findings from this experiment. We will be tracking the user stats and SE rankings from Google Analytics over the next couple weeks to see how this will affect the results.

The more people that participate, the more we will all learn. Tell your friends!​

Gain valuable information from this study into the insight and minds of Google to see what truly affects the search engine rankings and posistion.

I currently work for an Indianapolis based web design and SEO firm and we are conducting and hosting this experiment to see how user statstics can affect search engie rankings.

Please feel free to post any questions or comments you might have regarding this study/experiment.

 

GoogleBot could not track this information and therefor is not included in SERPs, only way this information could be tracked is....

A) The website is using Google Analytics to track web visitor stats.
B) The website is using Google AdSense for Revenue (Still lacks the ability to track much information)
C) The visitor is using Google Toolbar, which we already know currently doesn't effect SERPs.

Not trying to burst your bubble, just stating some information and still interested in the results.

 

Thanks for your reply, we are testing a theory that what googles finds important through their analytics tracking software, i.e. bouce rate, avg. time on site, etc. will affect their search engine results and also be important on the SEO side.

We believe that there may be correlation between what Google Analytics finds as important aspects of your site, and how it is posistioned on Google. Thanks again for the response, and please fell free to take part in this study to recieve the results . . . Please feel free to post any more questions or comments you might have.

 

Make sure to PM me any results

 

Thanks for your interest . . .

To recieve the results of this study, please follow the steps in the original post, it only takes a few minutes. After you complete them, let me know and I will add you to the list of people to recieve this report. . . Thanks

 

Send me a private pm, I'll forget to do it, I'm at work and would rather do it from home.

 

I'm 100% sure user statistic don't effect SERP's

 

Do you have any proof or evidence to support this, because we do to the contrary. You don't think high bounce rates >85% affect your SERPS? Why would Google want others to view a site that 90% of the people that have seen the site were not interested in?? This is not the goal and purpose of Google, they started to provide valuable, related results for searchers.

I can send you graphs and data that directly corelate bouce rates and SERPS. You won't find websites with high bouce rates anywhere near the top for competive search phrases, but thanks for you input and feel free to elaborate more if you have any proof of your claim. Thanks

 

Traffic of website will have small role in serps as all of them what to see that site google will show it.But mainly serps are on domain authority and quality of content.

 

Done. Pleasew Pm me the results ;0)

I think this is a great experiment, very interesting concept and why not? Google intends to provide the most relevant information in relation to the query terms so bounce rate and time stayed o site would be a good indicator of this.

 

Hm... so if you are right and the visitors behaviour metters, so then you can use Google Analytics to manipulate your ratings. Seems not very clever of google

 

Great, thanks for participating You have been added to the list of recipients to recieve this report.

This is an interesting concept and although there are many factors and variables that affect your search engine results, it will be interesting to see exactly how and if user stats will affect this.

 

Thanks for your reply, I am not saying that visitors stats are the only thing google looks at, but I do believe these factors are weighed in, although maybe lightly, into the search engine results.

Wouldn't it make sense though for google to display the most relevant, liked and visited websites for certain terms, taking into account how long the visitors view each page, and if they stay to visit interior pages?

I don't think it would make sense for Google to include these stats on their Analytics as the 6 main factors, and not take them into account in the rankings. They obviously find these factors important, or they wouldn't include them in the site analytics, right?

 

This has been tested a number of times and no correlation has been found. Google does have a patent regarding ranking factors based on this data but that doesnt mean much.

The problem is some sites naturally have a high bounce rate, whos to say a user only spent 5 seconds on the page because they got the specific info they were after or they thought it was junk?

 

This is a good point, my humor sites bounce rate is around 30% and I get very high pageviews per visitor, this is just then nature of the site and wouldn't reflect correctly in ranking in this method.

 

Thanks for your comments sweetfunny.

In my opinion, if a site is truly valuable and informative, the users will return and spend time on the site. I can't think of any site that I found to be truly informative and valuable that I only spent 5 seconds or less on.

For example, DigitalPoint . . . Members spend countless hours on this site because they provide improtant, relevant information to the keywords people are searching for. Nobody would spend 5 seconds or less on this site if they found it to be informative, interesting and relative to what they were looking for.

The fact is, this site has many thousands of visitors who are return customers and spend coutless hours on the site. You don't think this affects their extremely high SERPS? Sometimes digitalpoint pages and links even surpass peoples homepages for their own keywords when they put their link on DP.

 

I figured I'd give you some +REP for this attempt to get some data, but I expect results posted publicly

 

Thank you ssandecki, your rep is appreciated. The only problem with posting this publicaly is it will be hard to obtain good, solid info. If people do not participate in the steps in the original post, then I will not be able to determine if and how this will affect the results.

The more people participate, the better results I will get from this study. If no one participates, then nothing will be learned from this, so please particapite and encourage others to do so. Several have participated, but I would honestly like to have many more to get steady, valid results. The good news is, this site only averages about 30-50 uniqes daily, so even a little increase in visitor stats could yield small results.

I will however, supply you with the results since you have been active in this discussion, and are interested in the results, thanks again

 

I have a site with charts showing correct syntax for code, like how to do a hyperlink in HTML. People come, get exactly what they need and go.

Ok look at it this way, if i browse several pages on a site did i do it because i liked the site and thought it was a valuable resoure, or because i couldnt find the information i was looking for and left disappointed?

Would you mark a site up or down if it had this pattern for a particular term?

 

I see, but don't you think pepole will bookmark and return, possibly spend more time on the site if they are interested in html codes and find your site useful?

Touche, I guess there are many ways of interpreting this information, this is partly the basis for conducting this study.

If members atleast visited a few internal pages and stayed for a short while, I would say they found it atleast somewhat useful. If people were repeatedly bouncing from the index/front page, and were not navigating deeper into the site for certain keyphrases, I would say they did not find the site useful, IMHO. But who really knows how the all-imposing Google interprets this. This is the reason for this study and thanks for your input and interest.