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

i do think you are not using Google Analytics to track user, but ClickTale

 

Yes, but remember they are not entering the site by a Google search query any more. Also when they return, chances are it's another 5-10 second visit to confirm if their code syntax is right or wrong.

See, a short visit duration or a lack of pageviews per visitor can statistically mean the site answered the users query better than a site they spent 5 minutes on, clicking several pages only to still not find the information.

Also when i tested this, i had a second site that everyone entered for the search term only to click back after 5-10 seconds then enter the second test site and stay a lot longer and view more pages.

The idea was to see if we could switch the sites positions due to sheer user behavior, however it didn't work. So you can do another test to gather more data, have a second site and try and demote it by users bouncing off the index page in under 30 seconds. It requires much less attention spam from the contributors.

I'm not saying Google does or does not gather or use this data, they do have a patent for it. Whether this patent is to stop the competition doing it, or they are looking in to the future i don't know however at this stage from my testing i have not found any evidence this is occuring.

So, +Rep to you because more people should conduct testing rather than relying on outdated and recycled rubbish that's out there regarding SEO.

 

+Rep to you sweet, you handle this whole discussion the correct way unlike many other DP members would of. Total respect for that from me, I messed up the comment, so it might look funny

 

I applaud anyone who does SEO testing regardless if i know the answer or not, because things change and i may even learn something myself. At any given time I've got several tests cooking to see what's best or to alert me to algo changes and that sort of thing.

I'm on the OP's test site as we speak, I've done about 6 pages of approximately a minute each.

 

I definitely agree sweetfunny. One thing I Do Know is that I don't know everything there is about SEO and the purpose of this thread/study is to learn and research more about SEO and to attempt to keep up with the frequent changes and updates. Afterall, thats what DP was intended for, I think; relevant, constructve community conversations to inform the group and community as a whole. *Rep+ for you my friend* for inputing some useful information!

Thanks for contributing to this study, the more the better!
I thought it would be particuraly useful to utilize DP, since the ips and members from DP are located around the world, a nice broad region for data collecting instead of regionally located inputs.

 

I would like to thank Jordan for conducting this study on our behalf. I'm am most certainly positive that Google uses factors such as Bounce Rate for determining rankings. We are conducting the study to confirm our suspicions. Case in point. I have a very large forum with well over a thousand regular members in a niche industry. This website generates income from Adsense as well as a store that sells motorcycle parts. My forum dominates for my niche industry from one word terms to long tail. Over 17,000 first page Google rankings for various phrases.

When I started adding Adsense ads to the forum in the header, my bounce rate increased by nearly 20%. After the first two weeks my rankings for my main keywords fell by 4-5 positions. These rankings were stable for well over 8 months prior. I took the Adsense ads off the header and just left them on the footer. Two weeks later my bounce rate was back to 26% and my rankings returned. I went through this exercise several times for nearly three months with the same movement on rankings. LIKE CLOCKWORK! I've since had my programmer write a script that only shows the Adsense ads in the header on every page but the homepage. My rankings have not changed for the past month and a half. Coincidence? I think not, but this is why we must conduct this experiment to see if we see the same thing with a different url, different topic and no Adsense. I know we must have a much larger data set to prove a point, but I think we will go with our gut on this one if this small experiment shows similar results. That is until proven otherwise.

Thank you for your participation and comments!

 

The main issue is how would Google obtain this data outside of the toolbar and non-analytics usage, even if 50% of the internet used one or the other it still wouldn't provide accurate data, I'll wait for the study to end.

The main reason for your SERPs drop was the change of your main page, notice how when you went back to the old format it returned?

 

They included it because this information may be of some interest to webmasters and SEOs. They may see if they need more text or better information if visitors spend too little time on the page.

 

I suggest that you do not make assumptions based on what you think Google can and can not track. Google offers free wireless Internet access to many cities, they have acquired ISPs and they are having talks with large hosting companies like Godaddy.com. You may think that Google bought YouTube for the ad revenue alone, but the data and user statistics are far more valuable to Google. They CAN and WILL track information of all types.

I also would not put it past Google to work with Safari and Firefox browsers to track information even without the Toolbar. I already know that Google and Apple have a very close relationship.

 

I agree, Google is a master at data harvesting and utilization and no doubt the best company the world has seen. I don't doubt for one second they harvest data from user behavior, but i do doubt they are using it to order search results at this stage.

Remember, Google is really an Advertising Company first and a Search Engine second. The data is far better utilized for targeting advertising than ordering SERP's when they already have around 200 factors to order their index already.

 

here is what I don't understand about this idea:

If Google really is using this type of info to determine its SERPs, wouldn't it give an unfair advantage to sites that have analytics over sites that don't?

 

Or disadvantage, yes this is true.

That's why if they used behavioral data it would be clicking the back button and returning to the SERP's and clicking another site instead for the same query.

So if a user searched "green apples" and clicked the #1 result, clicked back within say 10 seconds and clicked the #2 and stayed there or returned to Google and done another completely unrelated search it would "assume" #2 answered the query better than #1

That's why when i tested it, i had a "bad" site we would click through from Google, click back in 5-10 seconds then click the "good" site we were trying to promote and browse for a while giving the impression it was better.

 

If I were Google I would take the average of all of the websites' Bounce rates that have analytics installed or could be tracked via other proprietary sources. If a given website had a statistically low Bounce rate it may give the website some 'bonus points' or some extra value that could be factored into a matrix. A website with a statistically high bounce rate as compared to the average would loose value and drop in the SERPs. This is just one idea, but Google could be doing any number of things to factor this information into it's algo.

 

done, waiting for results

 

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

 

We are still gathering data for this study and we need more participants!!

Just follow the directions in the original post and post here. You will be added to the list of recipients to recieve this report.