DXL - 10:19 pm on Oct 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

For example: A particular site is #1 for its competative term. If you look at the stats, he has 50,000 unique visitors a month, but only 85,000 page views. This tells me that a major percentage of visitors don't see anything useful imediately, and just leaves. The portion that stays, gets to the second page, and leaves. Looking at the site, you can definately see why... it sucks, in both functionality, and appearance.

I have some sites that contain song lyrics, its not uncommon to see 35k people a month entering a particular song's page via Google, and then 32k people exiting the site from that same page. That page was listed #1 in Google, they found what they needed and left, there's no way for Google to determine how useful the page really is short of human editing.

As a sidenote, I found it funny how a search engine submission company that I still have a newsletter subscription to pointed out this thread in their last mailout (they'll get you listed on powerhouse SE's link "Hot Skunk"). Their article starts by mentioning that the 30 rank drop is possibly the result of Black Hat SEO techniques, and immediately asks people to consider an "SEO solution that won't get you penalized" that they offer. Gotta love spin.