donna130 - 10:29 am on Nov 6, 2011 (gmt 0)

topr8--hey thanks so much for your answer.

yeah, that's always my underlying feeling too, that it would constitute an obvious breach of privacy.

Speaking of which, and to address your Google Analytics conversion code response:

//"personally my sales/conversion and various other data is the most valuable thing i have - i find it laughable that loads of webmasters give it away free to a third party."//

, that's interesting you you should say that. That's kindof my point too that, barring our putting up (example only) Google Analytic's conversion code, Google wouldn't really have a WAY (am I right?) to "see" your conversion data. Again, my original interest being in learning "how" the SE gets your add to cart data (if you will), so that they can "optimize" their search results to make them more "relevant" for any given kw. But...to me...EVEN IF THEY COULD (and beyond privacy breaches as you mentioned), there would be numerous ADDITIONAL issues to contend with. A big one being 2 competitors:

Competitor A's biz model: sells low price/high volume, whereas

Competitor B's biz model: sells high price/lower volume.

So, any calculations by the SE to consider add to cart / purchases / conversions PREFERENTIALLY, ie favoring company "A" for that kw over company "B" would be improper bias, IMO.

I'm interested in more ideas about this stuff from others and get different points of view. Thanks again topr8.

For others arriving late, etc, here's a summary of the active question:

Assuming a webmaster (just a hypothetical) does NOT use Google Analytics conversion code, in what OTHER ways does Google (just using as example only) use to track our website conversions so that they can rank a certain URL higher for a certain keyword in the SERPs since it will have been "proven"..."more relevant"? Do they ALREADY do this?