2by4 - 10:56 pm on Apr 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

Seos and website owners are the only people in the world doing that stuff for all practical purposes, try to think like average searchers, nobody here is an average searcher, the overwhelming majority of users does a search, then either stays on the page, looks at it for a bit, or comes back right away. I believe the patent application referred to this exact behavior though I can't remember the exact wording.

Average searchers just know that they typed in a search term, they got some pages, they click on them, if they are right, they stay, if they are not, they go back to the next search item until they find one they like. Google's goal is to keep people using their product, which means to give users what they are looking for. This isn't particularly earth shattering information if you ask me.

Try to step out of the seo box, seos have very little impact on search patterns, we're talking about far too many searches a day for seos to influence things, though of course that won't stop them from trying. Obviously they can and do influence pages landing in the serps in the first place, the trick here is to get rid of garbage and replace it with reasonably good quality results.

Most people type in a search, then go to the site. If they don't come back to the google search, the result can be considered successful, if they do, it can be considered as a failure. There's no need to make simple things complicated.

Keep in mind, if this is being used, it's simply one factor among many, nobody knows what weighting any one factor has, so stressing about one component really isn't worth bothering about.

To keep it ultra simple: it's a good thing if your page gives the searcher what they were looking for. It's not necessarily a bad thing if it doesn't, since it's hard to know what they are looking for. But once the search numbers get big enough this stuff all becomes pure statistics, stuff you can study and integrate into other components.