Hi, This is a theory, I was hoping some people here have experience with this: Could it be possible visitor behavior will soon be the most important factor for ranking a page? When a visitor stays a long time on the site, visits lots of intern pages you could say the website is highly relevant for a certain keyword isn't it? So, will SEO in terms of what it means now completely die and should we begin to focus on keeping the visitor on the website rather than optimize a website like we all know it now? I would certainly think this would make our job much more interesting, and it would close the gap between the marketeers, designers and SEO's, with the SEO's having to do lots of water in their wine.
To be honest it is unlikely to be a MAJOR player... a ranking signal? It already is really... but it has it's place. For example a great deal of Google's personalized search is based on this and they have looked at it in the larger context in a few patents. Marrissa actually went as far as confirming query analysis (related behavioural metric)... and the other engines have their own versions... I have researched and written a TON on the matter... so here's some goodies; Beware; Google is watching you Taking off my tin foil hat Ranking via behavioral metrics (Google) User sensitive PageRank (Yahoo) Bookmarks as a ranking signal (Google) Microsoft take on behavioral ranking signals Guide to Google personalized search - which is a 4 part series wrapped up into a handy PDF The problem with non-personalized search usage of bhavioral metrics is the potential for spam... but it is certainly being looked by modern day search engines
This is something that I have been considering as well and wondering how much weight google places on it. Thanks for the information.
I am personally big on it.. but understandably the big three are conservative about it.... makes for a 'noisy signal' as Matt put it.... Though we did see microsoft take a stab at it again this week with Browse Rank Microsoft Research - the research paper (PDF) News around the web on BrowseRank http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017805.html http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3630408 http://www.searchnewz.com/topstory/news/sn-2-20080730MicrosoftTalksaboutBrowseRankBeyondPageRank.html ... but hey, Yahoo already has Personalized PageRank... so MS is late to the party.
This will never be a factor in search results for one main reason... how do you accurately track "all" visitors? Many people use browser plugins to block Google cookies and\or don't use the Google toolbar at all. This type of factor would also great a huge new playing field for gaming\cheating on search engines. I can see the automated robots on shell accounts now crawling and sitting on websites.
I personally do not see how users length of stay could accurately reflect keyword relevancy. I have found myself kept on a site not just because of keyword relevancy to my search queries, but because the site had some content that happened to catch my eye... I have also been known to keep a window open for lengths of time for later browsing once I have concluded certain activities. I would think for the above reasons this would be unreliable.