Googlebar - influence on serps?

[pgkooijman]

I am sure this question has been asked about a billion times before but site search does not give any relevant results it seems. Anyhoo, according to one of my members, just like Alexa, Google tracks which sites are being viewed with browsers that have the Google-bar installed and it will give a ranking to that as well that might influence your serps.

Is this true, and if so what (probably minimal) effect could something like that have...

[anallawalla]

and it will give a ranking to that as well that might influence your serps.

Not sure what you meant but the toolbar can be run in two modes, one of which tells Google about your surfing habits. I can assure you that using it does not influence your position in the SERPs, or else a few site owners here on WW would be using it day and night to call their own sites.

Ash

[jbinbpt]

I don't know if Google has ever explained what the voting buttons are for on the tool bar. I wonder if they assumed that the buttons were used for serp influence.

I would be surprised if Google was using tool bar data for any use except sending gooblebot in new directions.

jb

[MHes]

If Google gives a new site/page an initial boost with an inflated pr and it sees googlebar users clicking the link for certain searches, this could be a good indication that the site is useful and that they have got the ranking right. If people don't click then the site may drop for that search term

Just a thought....

[ILLstyle]

anallawalla

On installation of the tool bar you have the option of the toolbar collect anonymous data on you or you can opt out.
I can see this being used in the future if they don't use it already, it could really help google with quality control.

[Robino]

I would be surprised if Google was using tool bar data for any use except sending gooblebot in new directions.

The toolbar data is arguably the most valuable Web information in the world.

I would imagine many decisions are made based on this data.

I'm not saying that they're using it directly to determine search results. Although there is no reason for them not to.

[pgkooijman]

So, I guess no one is really sure. I agree however that collecting that data would be usefull if Google did use it for their serps.

[I_am_back]

Google tracks which sites are being viewed with browsers that have the Google-bar installed and it will give a ranking to that as well that might influence your serps.

While I'm sure Google does collect info from its toolbar, I think it is unlikley that they use this info for site rankings. Alexa does (from 4 million users *apparently*) but this is really such a small % of world users it's means next to nothing. Google would no doubt have MANY more users, but Google, I believe, is smart enough to know that even 20 million users is not a large enough % to rank a page from.

So I would put money on they do NOT use the data to rank sites.