Hello Are the search engines capable of looking at your site's traffic, and giving the site a higher ranking, based upon more traffic? The reason for my question is: I am developing an awesome viral idea, which will lead to tons of traffic to my site... wondering if the traffic itself (not any links) will boost my SE ranking? Thanks!
Traffic is a byproduct of good serps. Traffic does not mean serps, although usually for traffic to find you there has to be links into your site, SE's will find those link and credit the anchor text to your serps.
It wasn't but... Lets think about G Analytics. Some of the SEO people consider that if G has now access to the so many sites traffic stats it's possible they will do some kind of rate-selection based on their traffic. I take opposed opinion for granted.
Thanks mdvaldosta, What my intened question was, is the following: Let's say I'm giving away a unique product free. I post that in 3 places. Let's say that the viral effect takes place via email, and nobody posts anymore links to my site anywhere. Let's say I get a million hits tomorrow... would the SE's "know" about my hits and raise my rankings because of it? Thanks!
the answer to that question is either the SE's will raise your rankings or ban you. but i don't really think traffic is a factor or else all top 1 rankings would maintain their top spot because of all the traffic they're gaining because of google.
there's no way for google to know the traffic you are getting...so the answer to your question is more than likely...no. The only way google could know the amount of traffic your site gets and then use that as criteria for teh SERPs is through use of google analytics on your site or perhaps through alexa rankings. Both of these options are unlikey because alexa is typically considered unreliable and biased in it's traffic reports and the google analytics is too new and not widely adopted to be used for search results.
A search engine can't know your traffic...Alexa says that it does, however they are looking at the amount of links point to your website and just tell you monthly predictions. A search engine uses algorithmic problems to help identify which site is more valuable than others. Google has the best algorithmic problem so far, I believe.
I don't think traffic can influence a site's ranking. If that was possibe and I had about $25,000 extra dollars I would publish an advertisement on Yahoo's homepage. The traffic for that would be insane and should give my site a nice boost in the SERPs.
I have actually heard from several webmasters that when they heavily promoted their site and traffic went up their SERPS went up. When they didn't they dropped. However I guess this is a case of the chicken and egg!!
Analytics and Sitemaps will go hand in hand, IMHO. If you regenerate your sitemaps on a specific interval, Google can use Sitemaps to extract a very accurate number of accessed URL's and derive a general profile for the site.
Well there is a google patent out there that describes its technology as potentially using traffic to determine positioning. Keep in mind though that the patent is basically a "shotgun" approach of listing anything they might possibly want to do - it doesn't mean they actually do use it. They do have a realistic way of figuring out traffic - the google toolbar. Remember that you have to agree to send back stats to use the advanced features. Enough people use it that they could probably get a decent sample size that would let them figure out estimates of the traffic of most sites. My guess is that this is not a component now, but could easily become one in the future.