leadegroot - 12:47 pm on Nov 10, 2007 (gmt 0)

on bounce rate -
I think it is important to distinguish between what Google Analytics labels as 'bounce rate' and what 'google search' probably labels as 'bounce rate'
Analytics is telling you data about your website - bounce rate means those who came, looked at one page and left. It is indeed a noisy signal as it may mean they got exactly what they wanted on that one page.

I think that 'bounce rate' for Google Search is a different critter - it is 'did the searcher return from that page and click on a different result?' That's a bounce for search.

While the analytics bounce rate may be of interest to the algo, it is only an indicator because it is noisy.
The search bounce rate is much less noisy (although not perfect - I don't know about you, but I will open several results in tabs over the space of 2 seconds and then let them all load to look at them) and has a far higher relevance when applied to your SERP placement