Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
If this is the case, then could people using tabbed browsers be affecting your results without knowing it. For example, when I'm researching something I will run down through the SERPS opening 10-20 pages in the background without leaving G's page. Then I will go through these open pages, closing each one after I have finished reading it, before returning to G.
The sites further down the listing will therefore always show a much greater time delay for the return visit.
Anyone else think this might screw up that particular part of the algo or, even worse, be something that a competitor could use against you?
In other words, you click on a result, go to the page, go back to search page, click on next result, google tracks that, and notes that you didn't find what you wanted on result 1. And so on.
When you don't click on a new result I'd assume google assumes you found what you wanted, the last result clicked on that is. Google doesn't know what pages you have open or not unless you use the google toolbar.
Google cannot measure how long was spent at site #1 or #2 or #3 individually this way.
I use tabs, and when I search, I open up items on by one, close the ones that aren't interesting, then keep the ones I like. But that's also not very standard searcher behavior, most people click, go back, click, go back. Only average behavior really will affect stuff overall, and I'd guess something under 99.9999 percent of searchers do not open up all the serps at once, so it's really not an issue.
>> Firefox passes 100 million downloads.
Define irrelevant...
Statistically irrelevant means it will have no outcome on the serps delivered.
The simple presence of tabbed browsing does not automatically equal using that tabbed browsing in this way. Only one specific type of power user would even think of doing searches this way, and out of that group, only a relative handful would actually do it. My guess is that out of that last group, most of them are webmasterworld members...
Maybe I just don't think like a "normal" user, LOL.
I personally think that time spent at a site, or which site was the last visited are lousy metrics. If you take someone that is price shopping as an example, they are going to be hitting several sites to compare prices and look for information. The last link they follow is not necessarily the site that they choose to buy from, nor is the time that they spend at a site indicitive of that being the site that they bought from, or of the quality of the information.
If someone has to click several links at a site looking for information that they never find, it can take just as long as feading an informative article, and take significantly longer than the perfect search result that gives you a page with the answer to your search in the <H1> at the top of the page.
Hell, the last site visited in the SERPs are just as likely to show that someone gave up on that particular search term as that they found what they were looking for.
If you stop to think about it, forget your behavior, try to think in terms of average behavior, most users will do pretty much the same thing, on average. So if say the site has 5 brownie points already from backlinks and content etc, maybe user behavior adds 1 brownie point, who knows how it really works. And power user behavior just isn't that relevant, most of us here are power users, and the rest of the users aren't on WebmasterWorld, judging anything re search by your own behavior is a pretty bad idea, watch a non techie do some searches, then you'll be watching the same stuff google watches, forget our slick 3 row custom set tabs set to open a new tab for every serp clicked [not standard, standard redirects your search, by the way... one day people will actually look at how google is working for default users before assuming default user behavior..]
Keeping it to the original poster's question, his behavior is not likely to ever influence a thing, it's just one person for his target search terms.
Anyway, I can think of few things less relevant to worry about nowadays, I'd say we'd all be better off just creating some fresh and interesting content for our site, no?
Google's algo might take into consideration is the amount of time a user spends looking at a link
When I hear Google is considering how sticky a site is I wonder how sticky are we talking about?
It is more a way to catch made for Adsense and such. Are they looking for sites where pretty much everyone pops in and immediatly pops out again because they don't find any content on the page?
Or is this a competition to keep more people on your site at least 15 min, a half hour? Maybe the best thing then would be to have a busy message board. That keeps people on longer.
I've always opened heaps of windows at the same time, so I can read the first few while the others are still loading.
From old get-paid-to-read-email days, there are heaps of people doing exactly this too - using CB and opening many windows at a time.
